


Moving On

by etmuse



Series: Guilt 'Verse [3]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etmuse/pseuds/etmuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa is gone, and Ianto is starting to move on with his life, but it isn't always as easy as it sounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ianto sighed as there was a knock on the door. That would no doubt be Gwen.

He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to do this, but he _had_ agreed. Some might have said that he only agreed under duress, but he knew that was a gross exaggeration – Gwen meant well. And in other circumstances, he would probably be looking forward to the evening ahead.

“Ianto? Are you there?” Gwen’s voice came through the door.

“I’m just coming,” Ianto yelled back, pulling on his jacket and patting his pockets, checking for his keys, wallet and mobile.

He opened the door to an impatient Gwen. “Come on,” she said encouragingly. “You can’t be late to your own birthday party.”

“I know,” he replied, forcing a weak smile to his face. “So you told me yesterday. _And_ today before you pushed me out the door at work.”

“That’s because it’s true,” Gwen smiled. “Everyone will be arriving soon, and you need to be there when they do.”

“Come on then, let’s get going,” Ianto said, showing no sign of the apprehension he had about this party.

He followed Gwen down to her car, trying not to fidget. He knew he should be grateful to her for throwing him a celebration – he would never have done it on his own. And he did have to be thankful that she’d offered to host it at her flat rather than having everyone crowd into his. Less clean up for him to do at the end, and an easy escape if he needed it. Not that he planned on needing one.

He just rather wished that if she was this set on throwing a party, she could wait a few weeks and throw it for her _own_ birthday instead. Less pressure all around, and fewer memories to deal with. He suspected, however, that a celebration of his own continued existence was what Gwen thought he needed this year. He didn’t really have the heart to disillusion her.

 

Even with early evening traffic, the journey from his flat to Gwen’s took less than five minutes.

“Rhys!” Gwen called as she opened her front door. “Come and meet Ianto!”

Ianto followed her down her hallway, absently noting the lack of a coat rack and wondering if Gwen and Rhys were the kind of party throwers who threw everyone’s coats and jackets into a bedroom.

Rhys came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “Hi,” he said in a jovial tone, as he stuck out one now dry hand. “You must be Ianto; I’ve been hearing about you non-stop for the last few days.”

Ianto grasped his hand and shook it, the recognition hitting him like a lead weight. He remembered this man, he would bet his life on the fact that they’d met before.

He had to think for a moment before he could place him. Oh yes… Rhys Williams. His first ever trip into the field with Torchwood Three, when he’d been left behind while he finished up Retconning Rhys and the man who’d worked in that warehouse. He prodded a little harder at the memory. Evan something.

He shook Rhys’s hand firmly, hoping that he had managed to keep his thoughts over the last few seconds from showing on his face – it wouldn’t do to be accidentally tripping the man’s Retcon Block. “Nice to meet you,” he replied. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you, I promise.”

“Here, give me your coat and come on through to the living room,” Gwen said from beside him, waving him through. Rhys disappeared back into the kitchen as Ianto followed Gwen, shrugging out of his jacket as he did so. The room was enthusiastically, if not necessarily tastefully, decorated with party streamers and a sparkly banner.

Gwen took his jacket and ushered him into a seat on the sofa. “Do you want a beer, or juice, or wine, or…?” She waved her free hand as she ran out of options. “Before the rest start arriving.” She glanced at her watch. “Which they should be doing soon. Well, unless something has come up, but they’d have called if it had, I’m sure of it.”

“Uh, a beer, please?” Ianto said after a moment’s contemplation. As Gwen had picked him up, he definitely wasn’t going to be driving home, and alcohol might be the only way he would make it through this evening.

The next person to arrive was – thankfully, Ianto thought, not Jack – Toshiko, who looked as uncertain about the proceedings as Ianto himself felt.

Gwen bustled around them, moving things around and – from what they could hear from the kitchen – getting in Rhys’s way, leaving Tosh and Ianto sitting slightly awkwardly on the sofa.

He wasn’t sure what _exactly_ it was that had him feeling so unsure about this celebration. It wasn’t as if he’d never had a birthday party before. Like most people, of course, the majority had been as a small child, but Lisa had helped him throw a party for all of their friends two years ago, for his 21st. Friends and acquaintances had crammed into their flat, and… Ianto only had disjointed and hazy memories of most of the rest of the night.

What he did remember had been a good night though; he and Lisa had both woken up with splitting headaches but he hadn’t actually cared.

He sighed inwardly and took a swig from his bottle of beer. His life now was so different to the one he’d had back then. It was almost as if he was someone else entirely. It might be easier if that was true. His life would definitely be less complicated.

The doorbell rang again, and the bottom fell out of Ianto’s stomach. He just knew who it was at the door this time, and he didn’t know how he was going to face him in this casual setting. The vaguely uncomfortable feeling he’d been harbouring all afternoon now sharpened dramatically.

Even work had been somewhat awkward and stilted for the past two days since Ianto had returned.

Nothing had been right between them since that one kiss they’d shared exactly a week ago now. It had been an impulsive move on Ianto's part – one he’d thought about guiltily in the back of his mind for months, yes, but impulsive nonetheless.

He’d been surprised and pleased at first, when Jack had kissed him back, and they’d melted together, the movement so natural it was like they’d been together for years.

But then all of the thoughts Ianto had been ignoring had come crashing back into his head, reminding him of just why they _hadn’t_ been doing this for months. He'd known Jack had been able to read the expression on his face when he pulled away by the alacrity with which Jack had gathered his belongings and left, frowning.

It had been Toshiko, not Jack, who had ended up staying with him in the following days as the injuries he’d sustained in the Beacons started to heal. As much as he loved and adored Tosh – and he really did – it just wasn’t the same; they could empathise with each other over their traumatic experience, but her presence didn’t imbue him with the same sense of security that Jack’s could.

He just wished he knew how to fix things between them.

He heard him in the hallway before he saw him, his voice instantly recognisable to Ianto. Jack and Owen stepped through the living room door at the same time, Jack brushing off Gwen’s offer of drinks while Owen looked undecided.

Jack’s gaze briefly met Ianto’s before they both swiftly looked away.

The buffer of the others – helped in no small part by Rhys’s chatty and ebullient presence – kept the atmosphere between the two of them from becoming unbearable through the snacks, cake and presents portion of the evening.

Ianto was relieved that no huge fuss had been made on a gift; the wrapped parcels he was presented with held just small trifles, and were marked as being from the whole team, as a collective. Despite the fact that he’d known most of them for over half a year, anything more would have felt – somehow – too soon.

With the drink flowing rather freely, the conversation turned sillier and more raucous as the evening wore on. The alcohol provided a slight dulling of thought and emotion, but even so, Ianto found himself feeling less and less comfortable as the hours passed. Memories assaulted him from every direction.

Everyone was engrossed in a noisy discussion of Ianto-wasn’t-sure-what, so no one noticed as Ianto slipped out for a bit of peace and relative quiet in the hallway.

Or so he’d thought.

Ianto leant against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, wincing as his still bruised ribs protested the movement.

“Are you okay?”

His head jerked up at Jack’s words.

“Yeah,” he answered, dropping his gaze back to the floor. “Just twisted something that I shouldn’t have, that’s all. You can go back and join the others.”

Jack’s shadow fell over him. “I didn’t just mean physically okay,” he clarified. “You’re sitting out here on your own instead of being in there celebrating your birthday with your friends. That doesn’t seem like okay to me.”

Ianto shrugged half-heartedly and Jack sank down beside him.

“So,” Jack began, drawing out the word. “Look, I know things haven’t been right between us, and… well, I think we both know why. But we don’t have to let it do this to us; you can still talk to me.” He paused. “If you need to, that is.”

There was a long moment of silence between them as Ianto considered Jack’s words. Maybe Jack was right – maybe the only way for them to fix things was just to go on as they had before, pretend nothing had ever been wrong. _Fake it until you make it._ The phrase wandered into Ianto’s mind, and he distracted himself for a few seconds trying to remember where he’d heard it.

“I…” he started hesitantly.

“Is it the party?” Jack asked unsurely. “You didn’t have to let Gwen railroad you into it, you know. She’s stubborn but she would have taken no for an answer eventually.”

“I know,” Ianto sighed. “It was really nice of her to do all of this for me, and I really wanted to enjoy it, it’s just…”

“What?” Jack prompted softly. Ianto let his eyes lift and slide over to glance at Jack.

“I… I keep remembering bits of the last birthday party I had,” he admitted. “One that Lisa threw me. And then there’s…” He trailed off, waving a hand between them in a gesture he hoped Jack would interpret correctly.

“It just feels…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s only been two months!” He clenched his fists, a sudden flush of jittery energy flooding through him. “How can I be partying and enjoying myself? I want to, but at the same time, I don’t. I shouldn’t. It’s all so…”

He dropped his head into his hands, unclenching his fists to massage his forehead.

He felt Jack shift a little closer beside him. “Lisa would want you to be happy, you know that,” Jack murmured.

“I know she said that,” Ianto agreed, straightening up but keeping his hands across his face. “But that doesn’t mean it necessarily _feels_ right. And it’s hard today.”

“You celebrated a lot of birthdays with Lisa, didn’t you?” Jack’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Yeah,” Ianto said, turning his hands over and examining his knuckles to avoid looking up again. “Hers, mine. Even before we were together we used to be together on both of our birthdays, with friends. And then when we were a couple… most years we just spent the evening together. We didn’t have a lot of money to start out with, but we’d find ways to spoil each other.”

He turned to look at Jack. “Sometimes I just can’t believe she’s gone, that I’m never going to see her again. I have to live the rest of my life without her.”

Jack twisted and leant in closer, resting his hands gently on Ianto’s shoulders. “Remember, you don’t have to live through it alone. You have me; you have all of us. I won’t let you get lonely.”

Ianto nodded slowly, drawing strength from the intensely sincere look in Jack’s eyes.

Ianto wished he could blame the alcohol he had consumed that evening for what happened next, but he knew that he really hadn’t drunk that much. Not enough that he wasn’t in control of his own actions.

Jack was so close already, it was barely a stretch to press forward and touch their lips together.

Jack pulled away after barely a second. “Ianto,” he said gruffly. “Not that I’m complaining, because I think you know how I feel about this, but…”

Ianto blinked, realising what he’d just done. Again.

Scrambling to his feet, he walked straight down the hallway and fled.

He’d walked halfway home before he even realised he’d forgotten his coat.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack dropped his head back against the wall, not even attempting to get up and follow Ianto. He knew chasing after him wouldn’t be welcomed – and it wouldn’t help anything anyway.

He did wish he knew what was going on in Ianto’s mind. He thought he had come to know him so well, but the workings of Ianto’s mind were so often completely impenetrable. Even to Ianto, Jack sometimes suspected.

Even aside from Ianto’s thoughts, Jack wished he knew what was happening in his own head. There were conflicting urges and instincts everywhere, and he didn’t know what he should do, what he should _want_ to do.

There was a room marked ‘Ianto’ in his brain, and the moment he stepped inside it, nothing made sense anymore. He’d been suppressing so many of his feelings towards the younger man for so long, and then, last week, Ianto had kissed him, and they’d no longer accepted being ignored.

That Ianto was so clearly conflicted about it didn’t seem to change that at all. It just made Jack more confused himself.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t see why Ianto might be battling himself – barely a couple of months ago they’d had to say goodbye to Lisa. Ianto was doing so much better lately, but it was still relatively recent, and Jack wasn’t immune to the guilty feelings this could generate.

He was torn between his desire to protect and comfort Ianto and his plain old desire for just Ianto.

He sighed and slumped a little bit further down the wall. The only thing he could really do was wait and see how Ianto felt about this when he’d had time to think. Whatever Jack wanted, it had to be subsumed by what Ianto was ready for.

Gwen appeared in the living room doorway a few minutes later, her hand gripping the frame tightly, as if she was using it to keep her upright. Considering the number of bottles of wine and beer that had been consumed that evening, Jack thought it was actually a reasonable possibility.

“Have you seen Ianto?” she asked, squinting down at him.

Jack pushed himself more upright and ran a hand through his hair. “He’s gone,” he said plainly.

“Gone where?”

Jack looked up at her more closely. Perhaps she was tipsier than he’d thought; she was usually at least slightly more perceptive than this.

“Home, probably,” he replied. “I don’t know; he didn’t say. He just left.”

Gwen nodded slowly. “Oh.” She stood there in silence for a few moments before disappearing back into the living room.

Tosh took her place less than a minute later. She lowered herself to the floor, leaning against the wall opposite Jack. “Is Ianto okay?” she asked, the concern ringing clear in her voice. She sounded significantly more sober than Gwen had, which didn’t surprise Jack in the slightest. In the years he’d known her, he’d never seen Tosh have more than a couple of drinks; never enough for her to lose her poise.

“I don’t know,” Jack sighed, realising as he said it that it was true. He’d been shaken when he fled, but was he actually okay?

“Was he ill?” Tosh pressed gently. “Or…?”

Jack shook his head. “Not ill. Just…” He paused, considering his words. How much did he want to reveal to Toshiko? He couldn’t tell her about the kiss - either of the kisses – not without knowing how Ianto would feel about the revelation, but…

“He was…” Not upset, that wasn’t the right word, and he didn’t want to alarm Tosh unduly. But how could he explain why Ianto had gone home, left in a hurry like that? And how to reason why he hadn’t gone with him?

“The party was bringing up a few uncomfortable memories,” he eventually ventured. “He wanted some time alone to come to terms with it.”

He hoped the careful editing he’d done of the truth wasn’t evident on his face.

Toshiko’s forehead furrowed, and it was clear she wasn’t sure if she should take his words at face value or not.

“And you just let him go off on his own?” she asked a little uncertainly.

“I didn’t ‘let’ him do anything,” Jack protested. “He left, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate me chasing him down like a wayward toddler.”

Tosh looked back at him suspiciously; Jack knew she had probably deduced that there was more to the story than he was telling her, but thankfully she didn’t question him further.

“I might give him a call a bit later,” she said, glancing down at her watch for a moment. “Make sure he got home okay, see how he’s feeling about everything.”

Jack nodded, glad that Tosh had made the offer; despite the fact that he knew Ianto was more than capable of looking after himself, he couldn’t help but worry about him. Tosh would be there for Ianto if he needed someone and couldn’t – understandably, after the last week – talk to him.

Jack almost wished _he_ could talk to Tosh about the confusion in his mind, but he swore to himself he wouldn’t say anything – not unless Ianto did first.

He and Toshiko sat against their respective walls in silence for a few minutes before Jack started to push himself to his feet. “We should…” He jerked a thumb towards the living room door, reaching down to offer Tosh a hand up when she nodded her agreement.

With the guest of honour gone – and highly unlikely to return that evening – what was left of the party began to wrap up shortly after Tosh and Jack re-entered the room.

Jack stood at the window and watched Tosh help Owen pour himself into a taxi barely more than half an hour later, as he shrugged his own coat into place on his shoulders. Rhys – who he was sure he recognised, but couldn’t _quite_ place – saw him to the door, Gwen being a little bit too unsteady on her feet to do so.

Jack didn’t expect that either Gwen or Owen would be making it into work particularly early the next day.

 

The following morning he was proved right, with Toshiko the only one he saw come in before 9.30am. Ianto had, apparently, also arrived at some point before then, if the coffee that had appeared on his desk while he checked something in the armoury was anything to go by. Jack just hadn’t seen him enter the Hub.

When 10 o’clock came and went and he still hadn’t caught sight of him, he wandered over to Tosh’s desk and pretended to watch the code that was scrolling across her monitor screen.

“He’s in the archives,” Tosh said a minute later, not even looking up from her work. “And no, he didn’t tell me what was going on, but he did say that things between you two are a bit strained, which anyone could have worked out from your behaviour this last week.”

Jack swallowed and nodded. ‘Strained’ was definitely one way of describing it. But he didn’t know what he could do to fix it other than wait until Ianto felt ready to talk to him again. No matter how much part of him might want to, he wasn’t going to go track Ianto down in the archives and bother him there.

“Thanks,” he told Toshiko absently, backtracking to his desk and picking up the supply requisition form he’d been putting off all morning, making a start on it finally.

Owen and Gwen turned up within minutes of each other, just before lunchtime - both looking a little worse for the wear. Jack got his first sight of Ianto of the day a few minutes later when he appeared with a full jug of coffee and two mugs, taking them off his tray and placing them on the table in front of the ratty sofa where Owen and Gwen were slumped.

Even without getting up from behind his desk, Jack could see Gwen and Owen’s faces brighten at the arrival of coffee.

He dared to hope a little when Ianto came into his office with the last two mugs, having deposited one on Toshiko’s desk, but he simply put one of them down on his desk and nodded silently before turning around and leaving again.

“I’ve ordered pizza for lunch,” he announced softly when he reached the middle of the office area. “I hope that’s okay with everyone. It should be here shortly.”

Jack angled his head to watch him as far as he could as Ianto dropped the tray in the kitchen area and headed out of the cog door to – Jack presumed – wait for the pizza in the tourist office.

 

The next several days fell into a similar routine. Ianto and Jack spoke only about professional matters, or lunch. Ianto spent most of his time in the archives – which wasn’t unusual, of course, but Jack still felt the lack of his presence sorely.

He didn’t even have the distraction of Rift alerts to keep his mind off worrying about Ianto’s state of mind – as always, Sod’s Law dictated that the Rift should take a little break whenever he was most looking for some activity.

It didn’t help that whenever Ianto did appear – either to distribute coffee or consult with Tosh over some piece of tech he’d brought up from the archives – he had a faintly haunted look. Jack also suspected he hadn’t been sleeping as well as he might have been, and could only blame himself.

If only he hadn’t… When he actually thought about it, he wasn’t sure what he should really have done, but there had to be a better course of action than the one he’d taken.

There was a crash from the main area of the Hub, drawing Jack out of his musings. Jumping up from his seat, he ran out and leant over the railings between the desks and the rest of the Hub.

“Everyone okay?” he called, not able to spot immediately where the crash had come from.

“We’re fine!” he heard Tosh yell back.

“Bottom just fell out of a box of hopefully harmless artefacts from the archives!” Ianto added.

“As long as neither of you were hurt!” Jack called, frowning as he walked slowly back to his desk. ‘Hopefully harmless’ wasn’t exactly making him comfortable. He only hoped Ianto was right.


	3. Chapter 3

Tosh picked up another item from the box of unidentified items from the archives that Ianto had brought up for her to play with while things were quiet.

Ianto had been spending even more time than usual in the archives in the past several days – and Tosh knew that it was nothing to do with his admittedly strong work ethic, and everything do to with avoiding Jack.

The tension between the pair of them was running high, and the rest of the team could all feel it; Jack and Ianto not getting along threw the whole atmosphere of the Hub out of kilter.

If you weren’t familiar with their normal behaviour, it might not be immediately obvious that there was a problem; they were still perfectly civil to one another whenever Ianto made an appearance in the main area of the Hub, consummately professional in all of their necessary interactions; but to those that knew them, something was clearly not right.

They had even admitted as much to Tosh, they just hadn’t elaborated. She didn’t want to pry, but she couldn’t deny that she was intensely curious about what had happened. She could only imagine that it was something serious, as she just couldn’t see anything less ripping them apart like this – they’d been such close friends for so many months, seen each other through so much. This couldn’t just be some minor disagreement over something inconsequential.

Tosh only wished she knew some way to help; she hated seeing her two friends so uncomfortable in each others’ presence. But if neither of them approached her to talk about it, she wasn’t going to push.

She was drawn out of her contemplations by Ianto placing a new mug of coffee on the edge of the table she was working at. “Hey,” she said, stopping him before he could walk away. “How are you getting along with your great sort-out down there?”

Ianto shrugged one shoulder. “Slowly but surely,” he replied. “It’s beginning to look like there might eventually be an end in sight. How’s it coming with the latest mysteries?”

Tosh frowned and held up the item she’d removed from the box a short time before. “I’m hoping I actually manage to work out something about this one. I’ve had no luck with any of the other things from this box so far. Best as I can tell they’re just space junk.”

She had actually managed to make a tentative identification of a few of the artefacts Ianto had provided her with, which she hoped was helpful to Ianto in organising them all. It was definitely helping her – she was sure the solution to the problem she’d been having with a bug in her new prediction program would come to her if she concentrated on other things for long enough.

Ianto smiled at her but Tosh could tell his heart wasn’t in it; it didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, that might well be all that they are. I’m sure you’ll figure it out if anything actually has a use.”

He nodded slightly. “Well, I better get back to it. I was thinking the deli for lunch today, by the way, so if you have any objections, discuss them with the others and make another decision.”

Tosh nodded back at him as he turned to go finish distributing the caffeine.

 

Absorbed in the tests she was running on the latest artefact, Tosh barely noticed the time pass and the next thing she knew Ianto was back at her side, a paper wrapped package in his hand. “Do you want your lunch here, or are you coming up and eating in the conference room?”

She rolled her shoulders, easing out the kink she hadn’t realised was forming, and took off her glasses. “I’ll come up,” she told him, setting them down carefully at the side of her workspace. “Just give me a minute to make sure this won’t blow up on us during lunch.”

Tosh was slightly surprised when she made it up to the conference room a couple of minutes later that Ianto was actually there too, tucking into a thick sandwich. He hadn’t been eating with them for the last few days, preferring to take his lunch and go off to the tourist office or some other area of the Hub with it. She didn’t think he’d ever taken it to the archives – she knew he’d cleaned up down there but that couldn’t be hygienic - but she couldn’t be sure.

She hoped it was a positive sign that he was eating with them again, even if he was almost pointedly not looking at Jack and barely participating in the conversation. It was just so difficult to tell with Ianto; if he didn’t chose to tell you what he was feeling and struggling with, it was all but impossible to tell.

 

Her investigation took up the rest of the afternoon, but she did at least have the satisfaction of knowing that by the time she was even vaguely considering leaving, she had tentatively identified the artefact as some sort of futuristic educational toy for children.

She quickly wrote up a short summary note that Ianto could attach to it in the archives – the main report would be filed separately – and, double checking that she had the archive identification code correct, set the artefact aside with the others from the box.

There was only one item left in the bottom of the box. Tosh knew she shouldn’t really start working on it now – it was definitely going home time – but she couldn’t resist taking a quick look.

She picked up the last item by the chain attached and was surprised to find that it did actually have a little information written on the label hanging off it; none of the items from the box so far had had anything other than an identification code and occasionally a date and place found.

The team that had found this artefact in the 30s, however, had at least run a few scans, and noted the results on the identification tag in addition to the date and a list of the other items it had been found with. _‘Abnormal readings on routine activity scans’_ didn’t tell her much, but it was better than nothing.

The gem at the end of the chain glinted slightly as she rested it in the palm of her hand.

It was… inviting. Tempting. It almost felt like the shiny green stone was… calling to her. Even though the idea seemed impossible – despite everything she’d seen on the job in the last several years.

Tosh fought off the urges assaulting her brain and determinedly put the trinket down on her worktable. She couldn’t let it get to her; it would only lead to misery, she was sure of it. Look at what had happened last time.

Taking a deep breath, and pushing the little voice in her head that was telling her to pick the gem back up again to the back of her mind, she stepped away from the table. She was going home, and the artefact was staying here.

She would deal with it in the morning, and she would be careful not to get too close, not to let it get inside her head.

She climbed the steps up to the office area to collect her coat, calling out a goodbye to Jack who was looking absently thoughtful over a small stack of paperwork.

Without even realising it, her feet took her back down to her worktable, and she picked up the gem again, tugging off the archives tag and slipping the stone, chain and all, into her pocket.

The part of her brain that was still thinking clearly was screaming at her to put it back down, leave it well enough alone. There was a very good reason Jack had implemented the ‘no tech to be taken out of the Hub without permission’ rule, even if he didn’t enforce it particularly well. Or at all, unless you counted getting mad at them when he eventually discovered what had been done.

The part of her brain that was under the sway of the mysterious artefact wasn’t listening to her protestations, though, and she walked right out of the Hub with it still tucked away in her pocket, the calm on her face masking the battle within.

The whole way home, her hand kept sneaking into her pocket almost of its own volition to caress the smooth stone. The team who had discovered it in the 1930s had been right about one thing: there was something definitely not normal about this, even if you discounted the fact that it had appeared through the Rift.

The logical part of her mind, the part that was struggling hard – and failing – to regain control, wanted to turn around, go back to the Hub, and run a scan for psychic energy on it. The numbers would be – she was sure – sky high. And she suspected that it would show similarities to a few other items they had readings on already. Several of which were stored in the secure archive that only Jack knew the access code for – well, and Ianto, Tosh suspected.

But she couldn’t go back and find out for sure, because the gem – the amulet, really, if she was going to give it a more accurate name – was still in control. She wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted from her – and since when had she started attributing wants and desires to pieces of rock? – but she knew it wasn’t going to let her go until she did it.


	4. Chapter 4

Tosh slept very little that night. And even when she did sleep, her head was still full of this mysterious, enticing artefact, her dreams spinning around it as her subconscious tried to puzzle it out.

She woke suddenly early in the morning, the late summer sun just beginning to peek over the horizon. She picked up the stone from where she’d left it the night before, on her bedside table, close to her head; she hadn’t been able to force her own body to put it any further away from her than that.

It seemed so obvious, now, what it wanted her to do; seemed so clear. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t worked it out before.

It was an amulet – a piece of jewellery, in all but a few aspects. The obvious thing to do with it was to _wear_ it.

As far as bad ideas went, Tosh knew logically that this one ranked right up there – far, far above bringing the thing home with her in the first place – but she reached for the clasp in the chain anyway. She couldn’t not.

It stuck a little, probably from disuse – as far as Toshiko knew, it hadn’t been handled at all between the time the Torchwood team in the 30s had originally transferred it to the archives and when Ianto had come across it in his organisational drive and brought it up to her.

A few minutes of picking at it with nimble fingers, however, loosened it off and she drew the chain around her neck, twisting it around so she could just see the clasp below her chin to fasten it again.

She righted it again, letting the glistening stone rest against her collarbone, and waited expectantly. After all of the build-up, something had to happen, right?

A minute passed, and another. Still nothing.

The overwhelming mental influence of the gem had weakened with the action, so Tosh was fairly sure she had interpreted its desires correctly. It was still there, lurking in the back of her mind and poking gently at her thoughts, but she could concentrate again.

When nothing continued to happen, she eventually allowed herself to relax a little.

It _was_ a pretty stone – as she tilted her head, she could still just catch its green sparkle in the edge of her gaze when it caught the light. Could it be that it was simply a piece of futuristic jewellery that used psychic energy to entice people into wearing it? It would certainly be a unique sales technique, Tosh mused.

And if it was tuned to concentrate on female brain energy – it was definitely a feminine accessory – it might explain why it hadn’t seemed to have any effect on Ianto when he had come across it in the archives.

Soothed by the explanation, even when she had no proof one way or the other if she was right, Tosh let out a breath and sat back.

By the time she had dressed and eaten breakfast – with no further activity from the necklace, other than the low-level ‘background noise’ in her head – she was almost entirely convinced that her theory was correct.

It was still early when she left the house to walk to the Hub – not an unusual occurrence, she had been known to get there before dawn on occasion – but the streets were already starting to get quite busy as commuters made their way to the train station. The sun was already shining brightly, giving credence to the forecasts of a warm, sunny day.

At first, still on quieter and relatively deserted residential streets, she shrugged it off as nothing but her own imagination, or an overheard shout blown in on the breeze that lightly rustled through the trees.

It wasn’t unheard of for there still to be drunken students making their way home at this hour of the morning, inevitably a bit rowdy and noisy, so Tosh didn’t give it any further thought.

Until she hit a busier street, and it became too loud to ignore.

It was clear now that the noise wasn’t coming from anywhere in her surroundings; it was coming from inside her head. But at the same time, not.

Full sentences were appearing in her head from nowhere – she wasn’t thinking them herself, she didn’t even know what they were about, and they were in voices completely dissimilar to her own normal internal voice, but they were there, in her head.

Almost like someone else was thinking them for her.

It wasn’t until she walked past a smiling young man and a voice in her head said something clearly about _her_ that she realised that that was _exactly_ what was happening. She was picking up on the thoughts of the people around her, without even conscious volition.

It had to be the necklace, she thought, screwing up her forehead. It was the only thing that had changed in the last day.

But when she tried to make her hands reach up to take it off, she couldn’t do it. It was the previous evening all over again; her body wasn’t quite her own. The necklace was once again exerting its power over her.

The voices kept assaulting her as she walked towards the bay, the streets around her getting busier and busier as the minutes ticked past, as the morning got underway.

Voices occasionally started talking over each other, making it more difficult to distinguish what was actually being said. Tosh was almost relieved – she didn’t _want_ to know these things. Thoughts were private; no one should be able to listen in on them uninvited like she was doing now.

She sped up a little; if she could just make it to the Hub soon, maybe one of the others would be able to help. She couldn’t go on like this.

 _“She’ll never even see it coming…”_

Tosh half-turned to glance at the owner of that thought as she overtook him. Despite the warmth of the morning, he was wearing a large coat, zipped right up to his chest.

As the only person she knew who regularly wore a thick coat on a warm day was Jack – and Jack was very definitely one of a kind – it aroused her suspicions.

She slowed her pace slightly again – not enough to be obvious, but enough that she could keep pace with the guy. Just close enough that his thoughts were distinguishable from everyone else around them if she concentrated a little. She knew this was still an invasion of privacy, but she had to put her mind at rest.

 _“Shot to the head, that should do it. One shot, and she’ll be sorry.”_

Tosh dropped back further, until she was several paces behind him, waiting to see where he was going. If he was serious, if he actually planned to carry out what he was thinking… someone needed to stop him. Tosh didn’t stop to think about the fact she had already somehow decided that that someone should be her.

 _“Should have known she couldn’t cheat on me without me finding out, stupid bitch. She won’t have time to regret it.”_

The more Tosh heard, the more worried she became. This man – whoever he was – actually sounded like he truly intended on seeing his thoughts through.

They turned off the main road and onto more residential streets. As they were, even now the morning commute was well underway, rather quieter, Tosh walked more slowly again, trying not to attract his attention.

Not that he seemed to be paying attention to much of his surroundings anyway, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

He clearly knew exactly where he was going; he didn’t falter or have to think about which turn to take even once as they make their way through the streets.

Eventually, he came to a stop outside a small terraced house; Tosh ducked behind a car parked at the side of the road. For a long moment he just stood there; either his thoughts were silent or Tosh was just too far away from him to hear them.

He unzipped his coat and started up the short path to the front door.

Tosh crept around the car behind him, realising in a moment of slight panic that she had no plan. How was she going to stop him if he truly planned to hurt someone – a possibility that was looking more and more likely as every moment passed? Her weapon was at the Hub; like alien tech, they weren’t supposed to take the firepower out of the base unless they were on a case, or otherwise with Jack’s express permission.

That rule was enforced rather better than the other.

There was the sound of shattering glass, and Tosh craned her neck to see that the man had broken a pane in the front door with… yes, that was definitely a gun. He was serious.

She didn’t stop to think about what she would do next; someone was clearly in danger and Tosh was the only one around to help.

At that point, conscious thinking stopped and instinct took over. The next thing Tosh was truly aware of was standing on the doorstep, a shoe in her hand, and an unconscious man with a gun in his hand at her feet.

She dropped the shoe and dug around in her handbag, looking for her mobile phone. She needed to get the authorities – not Torchwood – out here before he regained consciousness.

She was crouched down, easing the weapon from the man’s hand when there was a noise from the house.

There door rattled before it opened, a slight young woman in a dressing gown a little too large for her appearing from inside. She looked more than half still asleep, but fully terrified. She was shaking from head to toe, and stared at Tosh with wide eyes. Her thoughts were wild and jumped and Tosh couldn’t make head nor tails of them.

Tosh dialled 999 and waited as she was put through to the police. “It’s okay,” she said calmingly to the poor young woman as the operator passed her across. “It’s going to be okay.”

 _“Police, state your emergency,”_ said the voice on the other end of the phone.

“I… there’s a man with a gun,” Tosh said, trying to work out how to describe what had happened. “He was breaking into a house, but I… knocked him out, somehow.” She still didn’t quite remember how she’d gone from standing at the bottom of the path to the doorstep.

 _“Can you give me an address, miss?”_ Tosh looked around, looking for a road sign to tell her what street she was on.

“Twenty-six Hailey Court,” the woman at the door whispered shakily, and Tosh passed on the information to the operator at the other end of the line.

After assurances that a car was on its way, Tosh hung up and refocused on the scared woman.

“I know him,” she thought, and then said aloud. _“What was he going to do this time? Why won’t he leave me alone?”_

“You do?” Tosh asked gently, taking a step closer, around the head of the man on the ground.

“I… I took out a restraining order against him a month ago,” she choked out, clearly struggling to retain any semblance of calm. “He’s been stalking me for months. He’s deranged.”

 _“Why me? Why?”_ She took a shuddery breath. “I thought… I was safe now.”

“You are, you will be,” Tosh said, tentatively putting a hand on the woman’s arm. “If you have a restraining order, then he’s violated it… and besides that he was trying to break into your house with a weapon. They won’t be letting him anywhere near you for quite some time.”

“Really?” She thought it before she said it, both the thought and the spoken tone indicating someone who didn’t want to get her hopes up. Not again.

“Really,” Tosh assured her. She shuffled closer again. “I’ve…” She paused, unsure again how much to reveal, how to explain herself. “I know someone who’s had a similar issue in the past,” she finally settled on. “They’ll look after you.”

The woman nodded. “Thank you, by the way.” She gave Tosh a tremulous smile. “If you hadn’t happened to be there, I’d…” She trailed off. _“I’d be dead,”_ her thoughts continued.

“Don’t think of it,” Tosh told her. “Really.”

“I mean it, though,” she replied. “Thank you.”

Tosh fought the urge to look away and blush. She wasn’t used to receiving praise and gratitude from strangers. It was harder to brush off than it was coming from Jack – or more frequently, Ianto.

They heard the sirens before they saw the police car as it roared down the street, screeching to a stop in front of the house. Another pulled up moments later.

The man at their feet was thankfully still unconscious as he was cuffed and dragged rather bodily towards one of the cars by two uniformed men. Another officer dug a tissue from his pocket to pick up the gun and put it into a bag.

“Right, ladies,” a fourth officer said, trying to look kindly and sympathetic. “I’m afraid you’re both going to have to come with me.”

Of course.


	5. Chapter 5

It was much later, but still not _late_ , when Tosh made it into the Hub that morning. She had been extensively questioned by the police before they let her go, and she knew there was a good possibility that it wasn’t over yet. Blocking out the cornucopia of intermingling thoughts in the confined atmosphere of the police station had been a nightmare.

Especially when she’d been trying to concentrate. They’d asked too many questions that she just _couldn’t_ answer with the truth – not if she didn’t want to be locked up again, this time in a psychiatric ward somewhere. While she trusted that – if it had come to it – Jack would have managed to get her out, she really didn’t want to face that experience again, no matter how temporarily.

The rest of the team were already there – or at least she assumed they were all there. She couldn’t see Ianto, but as he was more often found down in the archives than anywhere else, that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. And it was past 9am, so she couldn’t imagine him _not_ being in yet.

The pot of hot coffee in the small kitchen area confirmed her assumption.

She bypassed the office area, where Jack, Gwen and Owen were all hard at work – or making a very good impression of it if they weren’t – and headed back down to the worktable she’d been using the last days. She may not be able to make her fingers come up to take the necklace off, but she had enough control that she could stay out of range with her co-workers.

Hearing the thoughts of strangers was bad enough. Hearing those of the team, her friends – her family, almost – would be so much worse. And if that meant she had to avoid coming into anything approaching close contact with any of them until she could figure this out? Then that’s what she would do.

She buried herself in investigation of an item from the new box of archived artefacts that had appeared while she’d been gone, and – to her relief – the team left her to it all morning.

She slipped out of the Hub shortly before lunchtime, picking up sandwiches – for everyone; even avoiding the others she could still be considerate and pick up lunch – and bringing them back to the Hub. She dropped those for the others at the stairs to the office area and took her own back to her worktable.

When Ianto appeared from the archives twenty minutes later, Tosh waved her wrapped sandwich at him to dissuade him from coming over and pointed at the bag of sandwiches on the steps.

Her luck held out until mid-afternoon, the rest of the team staying busy with their own projects and leaving her to work. But she’d known it was terribly optimistic to think it would last.

“Hey, Tosh,” Owen said strolling over. “Scanner’s playing up on me; do you think you could take a look for me?”

Tosh looked up and tried not to let Owen’s thoughts invade her head.

 _She’s looking nice today… I wonder if she’s done something with her hair. Or maybe it’s a new top…I need to pay more attention…_

“Of course,” Tosh said hurriedly. “Just leave it on my desk and I’ll look at it once I’m finished with this.” She gestured at him with the screwdriver she was holding, hoping he would take the hint and go back to what he’d been doing – on the other side of the Hub.

It was almost too tempting to keep him close, and see where that line of thought was about to lead… but Tosh knew that when something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. And Owen thinking nice things about her – things that gave her headstrong heart reason to hope – was definitely on the ‘too good to be true’ list.

She would rather take the moment – however fleeting the thought might have been on Owen’s part – and keep it, hold it close, than risk having it ruined with further words.

Thankfully, Owen got the message and backed off. “Thanks, Tosh. You’re a lifesaver,” he told her, smiling shyly as he left.

Tosh closed her eyes for a second, pressing the moment into her memory, before turning back to her exploration of the inner workings of the artefact on her table.

An hour later, it was all back in one piece again, and although she wasn’t any closer to figuring out what it was supposed to do, she did have a fairly good idea of what pieces were missing that were preventing it doing it.

Scribbling out a tag, she glanced up at the office area. Jack was in his office, but neither Gwen nor Owen were anywhere to be seen. She could just see the edge of Owen’s scanner sitting on her desk, and decided to risk it – Jack’s desk was far enough away from her desk that she should be safe, right?

Just as she was picking the scanner up, she saw Gwen approaching, carrying an armful of folders. She pondered momentarily that she didn’t actually know what Gwen was currently working on before realising with dismay that there was no way she could get back to the worktable without passing close by Gwen.

She nodded, smiling, and tried to sidle past Gwen quickly before she could catch any of the other woman’s thoughts. She wasn’t quite fast enough.

 _Maybe if I try talking to Jack, see if he’ll tell me what the problem is… I hate seeing Ianto avoid him like this… They’re both so miserable…_

“I wouldn’t,” Tosh said to her, before she could think about it and filter her words.

Gwen stopped in her tracks and turned back to look at Tosh, a frown furrowing her forehead. “Wouldn’t what?” she asked, confusion seeping from every pore.

 _What’s she talking about?_

Tosh froze for a second, trying to work out how she should – could – reply to that. One the one hand, she really did want to dissuade Gwen from straight out asking Jack – or Ianto, for that matter – what the problem was; they’d talk to one of them if they wanted to. But on the other, how could she say anything about it when Gwen had only _thought_ her intentions? She couldn’t exactly come out and say that she’d been able to hear people’s thoughts all day.

No matter how much a part of her really wanted to. She couldn’t take the necklace off, and similarly, she couldn’t force the words from her throat to tell anyone what was going on.

“Bother Jack,” she eventually settled on. She glanced behind her for a second and was relieved to see that Jack was actually seemingly engrossed in some form or report or another. “He’s actually making headway on this month’s paperwork,” she added. “Ianto will kill us if you distract him now.”

 _How did she know I was going to…? Was I that obvious?_

Gwen didn’t look totally convinced by Tosh’s argument, but after a second she nodded. “You’re probably right,” she admitted. “Even though he can’t seem to be around Jack long enough to nag him about it himself, Ianto would hate for the paperwork to be late again.”

 _And I don’t want to cause even more trouble between those two, not when everything seems to be a mess already._

Toshiko sighed an internal sigh of relief when Gwen seemed to have dropped the idea, shifting the folders in her arms and sitting back down at her desk. Tosh picked up the scanner and fled back to the safety of the worktable.

She glanced at her watch as she sat back down. Nearly 4.30pm. With any luck, if the Rift stayed quiet, Jack would start trying to send everyone home in the next hour or so. And knowing Owen and Gwen as well as she did, Tosh suspected that neither of them would need _that_ much persuading.

The problem with the scanner wasn’t serious – if Owen had really thought about it, he would have been more than capable of sorting it out on his own. Tosh wasn’t sure if it was laziness on his part that had prompted him to bring it to her, or some remnant of the last time she’d yelled at him for screwing up a bit of tech she’d been working on.

Focused on her manipulation of the wiring inside the scanner, she didn’t even notice Ianto approaching her until he was almost beside the table.

His thoughts hit her before any sound from his footsteps did.

 _But what if it **did** mean something? Is that even worse? And **twice.** Once could be written off as a lapse in judgement, but twice. How could I do that to her? How could I betray her like that?_

“Coffee,” Ianto said brightly, his cheery tone betraying none of the self-flagellation and anxiety his thoughts revealed. “Last round of the day, unless something comes up.” He placed the mug on the side of the table, away from both the edge of the desk and the tech across the middle.

“Thanks,” Tosh said, smiling sympathetically and wishing – now that she’d had a glimpse into Ianto’s personal torment – there was something she could say. Knowing that she couldn’t say anything at all when Ianto hadn’t taken her into his confidence consentingly.

The necklace and the power it granted her with had never seemed so much a curse until this moment.

Ianto drifted away again with his tray of mugs, and it killed her to know for certain now that he was hurting badly – even if she still didn’t truly know the cause.

She lost herself in thought, rejecting scenario after scenario where she could offer Ianto any help. Everything she came up with just seemed far too invasive.

“You know, I just had a very interesting conversation with our friends over at the police station,” Jack’s voice said nearby, startling her back to alertness.

“Oh?” Tosh asked, too surprised to muster a more coherent response.

“Seems you were quite the hero this morning,” Jack continued, sauntering closer.

Tosh glanced around quickly and couldn’t see any of the others; she guessed that Owen and Gwen had probably gone home. Ianto… she wasn’t so sure.

As Jack neared, she braced herself to resist the onslaught of Jack’s thoughts, and was confused when – even when Jack was right next to her – it never appeared.

“Not really,” she demurred. “I was just…”

“In the right place at the right time?” Jack asked, clearly more than a little bit sceptical. “Happened to overhear some creep muttering _aloud_ about the attack he was about to perpetrate?”

Said by someone else like that, the story Tosh had spun for the police sounded even less plausible than it had in her own head that morning.

“Well, I don’t think he was particularly bright,” she ventured, knowing even as she said it that Jack wasn’t going to be convinced, still puzzling as she did as to why she wasn’t fighting off Jack’s thoughts.

She’d conclude that the necklace had somehow stopped working, but it was still exerting its power over her; she still couldn’t take it off.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” said Jack, “but there’s stupid, and then there’s ‘would never happen’.”

Jack perched on the edge of the table, looking down at Tosh. “I had this friend once, name was Vincent,” he started, and Tosh wondered where he was going with this. “Normal enough guy, but then one day, he starts acting a bit out of character. I just dismiss it. Next thing I know, he disappears for a few weeks, then comes back and wants to be called Vanessa.”

He looked at her as if he was waiting for her to get the point of the story, but Tosh was no closer to discerning once than she’d been at the start of it.

“Ever since then,” Jack continued a few moments later, “a friend starts acting oddly, I’m paying close attention.”

Ah.

When Tosh looked back at the day in her mind she knew she hadn’t been behaving exactly like herself. She wasn’t a ‘people person’ by any means, but she didn’t usually avoid the rest of the team the way she had been doing all day. She didn’t know what she could say in response to Jack, though.

“What’s going on, Tosh?” Jack said, leaning down slightly. “What’s wrong?”

Tosh tried to force the words through her lips, but couldn’t. “I… It’s… I wish I could tell you, Jack.”

“You can tell me anything, you know that,” Jack said softly.

“No. I… I _want_ to tell you, but I physically _can’t_.” She looked pleadingly at Jack, begging him to figure it out so she could be _free_.

“Something’s stopping you,” Jack concluded slowly.

Tosh managed to nod slightly.

She could see the moment when his eyes came to rest on the pendant around her neck; something clicked behind them.

“Oh, I see,” he breathed. “Been a very long time since I’ve seen one of those.”

He pushed away from the table, standing up and circling to stand behind Tosh. “This might be a bit of a shock to the system, so I’ll do this slowly, okay?” he murmured as he crouched down.

Despite the fact that Tosh wanted almost nothing more than to be rid of the amulet, she felt her heart rate increase and the start of a panic attack approaching as Jack’s hands came closer to the back of her neck.

“You’ll be okay,” Jack soothed. “Just breathe, and it’ll be over before you know it.”

Tosh concentrated on slow breaths in and out.

There was a tickle at the back of her neck as Jack reached in and undid the clasp of the pendant. She pushed down the rising panic.

A second later, it felt like a weight had been listed off her chest. The whisper in the back of her mind was gone; she was able to think clearly for herself again.

She closed her eyes for a brief second then swivelled around; Jack stood behind her, dangling the necklace from his fingers. The urge to take it back – put it on again – was there, but resistible.

“Feeling better?” Jack asked, wrapping the chain around his hand and flipping the gem into his palm.

Tosh nodded. “Thank you,” she said, heartfelt. “I… I couldn’t overcome it on my own.”

“Well, the race that designed them aren’t quite wired the same way mentally as humans,” Jack told her, looking at his hand and shaking his head.

She frowned. “Why aren’t you affected?” A thought struck her. “And Ianto. He brought it up to me from the archives and didn’t seem bothered by it at all.”

Jack semi-shrugged. “Some people are more susceptible than others. Me, I’ve had some psychic training to keep things like this out. Ianto’s probably just naturally resistant to its thrall.”

“So that’s why I didn’t hear any of your thoughts?” Tosh asked, curious. “Because you’ve had training to withstand it?”

Jack nodded mutely, and they looked at each other in silence for a few moments. “So what do you want to do with it?”

Tosh felt her eyes widen. “You’re giving me the choice?”

“You’re the only one who’s been directly affected, I think it’s only fair,” Jack said. “Although you should know that your options are limited to locking it up and destroying it.”

The words ‘destroy it’ sprang to her lips, but she hesitated before voicing them. As awful as her day under the power of the pendant had been, it had also proved useful. She had – very probably – saved a young woman’s life.

“Lock it up,” she said shakily. “I… I’m not saying I ever want to see the thing again, but it could be useful.”

“Okay.” Jack tucked it into a pocket. “It’s your choice.”

“Jack…” Tosh paused. “The others… I… I heard things… what do I tell them?”

“You don’t have to tell them at all, if you don’t want to,” Jack replied. “I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

Tosh nodded slowly, thinking about her day, thinking about the things she’d overheard that she never ought to have known.

She knew what she had to do.


	6. Chapter 6

Ianto looked at Toshiko with concern. She’d asked him if they could speak in confidence – making use of the relative quiet before Gwen and Owen arrived for the day – but now they were here, she looked… scared.

“Is everything okay, Tosh?” he asked, worried that she was ill, or had received bad news, or… He didn’t want to consider what else. He couldn’t bear for something to happen to Tosh; not now.

“I’m fine,” Tosh replied after a thoughtful moment. “But no, everything is not okay.” She fiddled with the sleeve of her cardigan.

“What’s wrong?” Ianto leant forward, resting his forearms on the table.

“It’s just… Yesterday, I…” Tosh seemed to be struggling to work out how to say what she wanted to. “The night before last,” she eventually began, “I found something in one of those boxes you’ve been bringing up for me to play with. A pendant.”

Ianto remembered the item she was talking about. “I know the one you mean,” he said. “It looked interesting. What about it?”

“Well, apparently it emits a psychic pull that some people are more affected by than others.” Tosh bit her bottom lip and Ianto got the unspoken message; Tosh had been susceptible.

“But you’re okay?” he checked. “What did it do to you?”

Tosh smiled wryly. “Well, technically all it made me do was put it on, but…”

“But?” Ianto didn’t like the sound of ‘but’.

“But then I couldn’t make myself take it off. And, more importantly, it gave me an ability I didn’t really want to have.”

“What did it _do_?” Ianto persisted, reaching over and putting a hand on top of hers.

Tosh took a deep breath. “The whole of yesterday, any time anyone came close to me, I could hear what they were thinking.”

Ianto stopped. “It gave you telepathic powers?”

Tosh nodded. “Only within a limited distance, thankfully. Which is why I was staying away from everyone yesterday.”

Ianto hadn’t particularly noticed, but then he had been rather busy keeping his own distance, down in the archives. He told himself it _wasn’t_ hiding. Although now that she mentioned it, he did remember that Tosh had eaten lunch alone, which wasn’t like her at all. Even when she was deep in the middle of a big project, she would usually join them for lunch.

He did vaguely remember speaking to her yesterday, though. What he didn’t remember was what he’d been _thinking_ about at the time. Although he doubted it had been anything much different than what had occupied his mind for most of the last weeks.

“So… why are you telling me this?” he asked tentatively, a little worried about what Tosh might have heard.

“I heard you thinking yesterday,” Tosh started slowly. “When… when you brought me coffee.”

Ianto nodded. He’d suspected as much. “And?”

Tosh shook her head softly, a sympathetic expression painted across her face. “I… I didn’t hear any details, if that’s what you’re worried about but…” She turned her hand over and squeezed his fingers. “You have to stop beating yourself up about whatever it is that happened. If…” She took a deep breath and appeared to come to some conclusion. “If it makes you happy, then it’s a good thing.”

Ianto bit his lip and frowned. “What exactly _did_ you hear?” he asked a little uncertainly.

Tosh smiled gently. “Not much, I promise,” she replied. “Just you agonising over some unspecified event that has happened twice, and worrying that whatever it was was betraying ‘her’.” She paused. “I’m assuming ‘her’ is Lisa.”

Ianto closed his eyes, his lips pressed tightly together. He didn’t confirm or deny Tosh’s assumption. He just didn’t know, couldn’t decide. Should he reveal all to Tosh? She… He wanted to believe that she wouldn’t actually hate him for it, and he knew she wouldn’t say anything to the others – even Jack.

But how could he admit this to anyone?

“Ianto?” He opened his eyes to Tosh’s concerned gaze. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” she assured him. “I just thought you should know what I’d heard.”

“I kissed Jack,” he blurted before he could talk himself out of it, freezing solid the moment the words had left his lips.

Tosh’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh!” Ianto could see the struggle on her face as she searched desperately for something to say. “Well, that’s not quite what I was expecting,” she eventually stuttered. “Not that it’s bad or anything, I just…”

“But it _is_ ,” Ianto interrupted agitatedly. “I only lost Lisa just a few months ago, and now I’m suddenly kissing the boss? What kind of man _does_ that?”

“A human one,” Tosh said softly. “You can’t control your heart, believe me. I know that from experience.”

Ianto stared down at the table, making a mental note of a slight mark he’d have to come back and polish away later. He knew what Tosh was trying to say – knew too of the feelings she harboured not-so-discretely towards Owen despite the lack of evidence for them ever being requited – but there was something she was missing.

“There’s a difference between feeling something and acting upon it,” he told her, his gaze never lifting from the table. “You can control your actions.”

There was a long silence.

“Ianto,” Tosh eventually started. “Did you _want_ to kiss Jack?”

“Yes,” Ianto said immediately, looking up. “No. I don’t know.” He slumped back in his seat a little. “I wanted to do it. But I didn’t _want_ to want to do it.” He shrugged a shoulder, feeling terribly guilty but also relieved that it was finally out there, that he could talk about it now, even if _only_ to Tosh.

“I actually…” He stopped, unsure, then decided to forge ahead; if he was admitting things, he might as well admit it all. “I actually sort of wanted to kiss him sometimes even before Lisa died, which is worse still.”

Tosh just grinned at him. “Well, it is Jack after all,” she said. “I think everyone wants to kiss him at _some_ point in their lives.”

Ianto snorted, but couldn’t help but smile a little. “You know, that’s not really helping.”

Tosh raised an eyebrow. “No? You’re smiling, at least.”

Ianto smoothed his face into a serious look. He hadn’t meant to smile.

Tosh sighed at him. “You know, you are allowed to be happy. I don’t think… No, I know for a _fact_ that Lisa didn’t want you to be miserable and grieving forever.”

Ianto knew that, he remembered her telling him very sternly more than once in her last days, but still… “It’s barely been two months, though,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t she deserve more than that?”

“There are no rules on grief, Ianto,” Tosh said, shaking her head. “At least, not these days. And it’s not as though you’re going to forget her, are you?”

Ianto, if it hadn’t been Tosh voicing it, would have been offended at the very suggestion. “Of course not. I never could, or would. I’ll always love her.”

“So what difference does it make if you let yourself be happy while you remember her?” Tosh said, shrugging slightly. “You’re not honouring her memory any better by making yourself miserable.”

Ianto blew out a breath. Tosh did make a good case. “You might have a point,” he slowly admitted.

“Of course I do,” Tosh said primly. “So the real question now is, what are you waiting for?”

Ianto just stared at her.

“I mean it,” she said earnestly. “You’ve admitted that you want it, and… well, I’d ask you if you thought Jack felt the same way, but there’s no point.”

“No point?” Ianto squeaked, cringing internally at the high pitch of his own voice. He cleared his throat. “No point?” he repeated, in a tone that didn’t make him feel as much like a little girl.

Tosh gave him a look that suggested she was currently reassessing his mental capabilities. “Ianto,” she said slowly and clearly. “Even _Owen_ can see how Jack feels about you, and we all know he’s not the most perceptive when it comes to these things.” The last was tinged with just a hint of pain, badly hidden.

“Owen will come around,” he reassured her, leaning forward again and hoping he wasn’t building Tosh up to hope for something that would never happen. Owen only very rarely betrayed his actual feelings, preferring most of the time to pretend that nothing affected him, so in truth Ianto had no idea how Owen felt about Toshiko at all. He would be a fool not to see how special Tosh was, however, and Ianto didn’t think Owen was that much of a fool.

“Maybe,” Tosh shrugged, “but we’re not talking about me – or Owen – right now. We’re talking about you and Jack.”

Ianto glared at her mildly but nevertheless allowed his mind to drift back, allowed himself to think for the first time not of the possible ramifications and meanings of his kisses with Jack, but the kisses themselves. “He did… he did kiss back. At least the first time,” he admitted hesitantly. And he couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed it when Jack had responded.

Tosh brightened once more. “See?” she said pointedly.

“But it still seems awfully soon,” Ianto insisted earnestly. How could two and a bit months be anywhere near long enough to consider himself over the death of someone he’d loved for the better part of seven years?

“If you _really_ don’t feel ready yet, then that’s one thing,” Tosh said firmly. “But if you’re holding back just because of some preconceived notion you have about what is ‘right’ then that’s another thing entirely.”

Ianto didn’t have any response to that; he knew that his misgivings were caused more by the latter than the former, and Tosh’s clear implication was that that wasn’t an acceptable reason.

There was a noise from downstairs. Ianto and Tosh both looked over as Gwen and Owen clattered through the cog door.

“Thank you,” Ianto said to Tosh sincerely. “For telling me. And for the talk.”

“And?” Tosh smiled hopefully. He could read the unsaid question in her eyes. _What are you going to do about it now?_

He tilted his head to the side and smiled. “I’ll let you know. But right now, I better go prepare the caffeine before the hoards descend.”

 

Tosh’s words still circled his mind as he measured beans into the grinder. Was he ready to allow himself a chance at happiness again? Was he holding back because of a sense of duty or because his heart really wasn’t ready to go on?

By the time the coffees had been prepared and the mugs set out on the tray, he had come to a decision, one he hoped he wouldn’t regret later.

For the first time in weeks, he left Jack’s coffee to last, and lingered for a moment after setting it down on Jack’s desk.

“Jack,” he said softly.

Jack looked up questioningly. “Yes?”

Ianto took a breath. “Jack, I…”

He was interrupted by a wailing from one of the computers outside.

The Rift alarm.

Of course.


	7. Chapter 7

“Jack.”

Jack lifted his head from his paperwork to find Ianto hovering in his office, looking a little nervous.

“Yes?” He tried not to get his hopes up too far about the fact that Ianto appeared to be speaking to him voluntarily again; there could very well be a work-related reason he had been sought out. He couldn’t help but hope just a little, however.

Ianto appeared to waver for a second. “Jack, I…”

There was a wailing noise from outside. Dammit, the Rift alarm.

Of course.

“Can we pick this up later?” Jack asked Ianto as he got to his feet.

Ianto nodded, turning to lead Jack out of his office. “Of course.”

“Right, guys, what do we have?” Jack said authoritatively as he strode to the centre of the cluster of desks.

Tosh wrinkled her forehead at him. “I’m not entirely sure; I’ve never seen the readings look like this before.”

Jack frowned. “Like what?”

She shook her head. “They’re not in the normal ranges at all.” She waved towards the screen, and Jack took a few steps so he could look over her shoulder. “And it’s coming and going. There’s a repeating pattern, but it’s slightly different every time, some variable is changing.”

As Jack watched, another pulse appeared – slightly different but very clearly related to the previous one still visible on the edge of the screen.

“Where is it?” Ianto’s voice said from behind him.

“And more importantly, what effect is it having?” Jack added as Tosh flipped the windows to show a map of Cardiff and its surroundings.

The screen was littered with small red markers. “Oh that is not good,” Owen said, shaking his head as they all leant in enough so they could see the screen. “You’re telling me we’ve got activity in all those places all at once?”

As he spoke, another spot appeared, this one just a few minutes up the road from the Plass, towards the centre of town.

Jack nodded soberly. “It looks like it.” He really hoped that these spikes weren’t bringing anything nasty through with them – there were far too many hotspots for the team to cover, even if he co-opted Ianto into the field team again. And he wasn’t to keen on that idea at all; Ianto had only just recovered from the physical effects of the last time they’d all gone on a field mission together.

“Tosh, how many of these locations are covered by CCTV?” he asked. Usually he hated to leave any incidence of Rift activity uninvestigated, but in the circumstances… “If any of them don’t appear to have been impacted at all by the Rift spike, we may have to ignore them for now. We don’t have the manpower to check them all out.”

Tosh was scrolling through a database of internal and external CCTV cameras they had access to. “Of the points that have appeared so far… we have camera coverage on eight of them… no, nine.”

Jack did a quick count of the red dots on screen – the 13th had just appeared. That still left four that they had no information on, but four was better than thirteen. Four was manageable, as long as none of those nine showed up something terrible.

“Anything on any of them that looks like it needs attention?”

The work of a few moments had Tosh bringing each of the camera feeds up on screen, scrolling backwards through them in an attempt to catch the point where each had been hit by Rift energy. The first four – all in areas that were relatively quiet at this time of morning – all appeared to be clear. If anything had happened at those locations, it wasn’t something visible.

Of the remaining five, three cameras had experienced some sort of interference in the last quarter of an hour, leaving them with a gap in the coverage of up to five minutes each which Toshiko could do nothing to restore – not with the level of access to the footage that they had, at least. One of them was in a supermarket, so Jack hoped fervently that there was nothing to worry about.

One more didn’t show anything, but one had a worrying shadowy region appear near the bottom of the camera image – it could have been completely innocent, it could have been unrelated, but Jack didn’t want to take that chance.

Which meant eight locations for them to check out, and hopefully no psychopathic aliens to encounter or dangerous technology to extract. If only they were ever that lucky.

He took a breath. “Right.” He straightened and took a step away from the desk so he could look at his team as he made some quick decisions. “Ianto.”

Ianto looked over, his stance showing his readiness to do whatever Jack needed of him; in this arena, at least, there was none of the painful awkwardness that had haunted their relationship since that first misguided kiss after the trip to the Beacons.

Jack indicated the screen with a finger. “Take over for Tosh.” Ianto nodded immediately, swinging into the chair Tosh had just as quickly vacated. “I know you know your way around the CCTV network almost as well as Tosh does by now; just…”

“Keep track of new Rift energy pulses appearing and check any camera footage we can get on the new locations,” Ianto finished for him matter-of-factly. “I got it.” Jack could tell from his tone, even without looking, that Ianto was rolling his eyes slightly.

He nodded. “Okay.” He had every confidence that Ianto knew exactly what was required, but he liked the illusion of giving the commands out loud. “The rest of us are going to check out these Rift locations – If we split up, we’ll get them checked out faster. Gwen, with me. We’ll take these four.” He indicated four of the blinking dots on the screen. “Tosh, Owen, you take the other four. Ianto will keep us posted on any new problem spots.”

Jack was about to dismiss them to gather up anything required and get to the garage when Owen spoke up.

“Uh, and how exactly are we going to get to them, assuming that you’re taking the SUV?” he asked pointedly.

“We’ll…” Jack stopped himself before the rest of that sentence – ‘drop you off there’- could come out as he realised what Owen was actually saying. He’d done his best to split the points geographically, but the time it would take to get between them on foot was too much time to waste, and public transport would be out if they found anything hazardous – or alive.

He frowned to himself, trying to remember what Owen was driving these days – the last car he could remember wouldn’t be any use at all. Tosh probably drove something more suited to the purpose, but it was a nice day; Tosh had almost certainly walked in.

There just wasn’t any way that this was going to work – in the back of his mind, Jack started to think about how much careful budgeting would be required for them to buy another vehicle. He wondered if Ianto would be willing to help him figure out the details; Ianto was so much better at the paperwork side of running Torchwood than he had ever been.

Of course, that relied on Ianto speaking to him again – he hoped that whatever Ianto had been about to say when the alarm went off would have taken them in that direction.

But that was a problem for later, right now, they had to check out these Rift activity spots. “Okay, scratch that, then. Plan B. We’ll all just have to go together, check each one out twice as fast. If we start with the four…”

“Five,” Ianto interrupted. “New point just came in, and we can’t quite see it from the nearest CCTV camera.”

Jack sighed slightly. Despite putting Ianto on the task, he’d hoped – optimistically, and unrealistically, he knew – that no new points _would_ actually come in. “Right, we’ll start with the _five_ places where we don’t have any camera coverage, then the one with the shadow… and go from there. Hopefully we won’t find anything that needs much dealing with.”

Leaving the others to gather up whatever they felt they’d need, Jack checked his holster and went back to his office to grab his coat from its hook. By the time he had it settled comfortably on his shoulders – he wondered idly when he had become _so_ used to Ianto helping him on with it – the others were back and ready to go.

 

Six and a half hours, fifty-nine bursts of Rift energy that required investigation, fourteen pieces of relatively harmless tech and one slightly less harmless piece of tech later, Jack, Owen and Gwen were finally on their way to stop the Rift flares at their source.

They’d dropped Toshiko back at the Hub nearly an hour and a half before, after Ianto had spotted a possibly traceable signal underneath the pattern of Rift activity. Ianto was no slouch when it came to computers, but his hacking and tracing skills were nothing compared to Tosh.

Between the two of them, they’d drawn out a weak and distorted signal and processed it until they managed to get a location. Jack had no idea what they could expect to find at that location, but they would find out soon.

 _“We’ve got another mystery spike,”_ Tosh’s voice said through the comms. _“Can’t quite see it from the closest CCTV. I don’t know if you want to…”_

“I think we’ll leave it for now,” Jack replied – none of the discoveries they’d made so far had been requiring of truly urgent attention, so he was counting on this one being no different. “We’ll carry on and see if we can find out who – or what – is causing it. We can’t just keep fighting the little fires all day; we’ll never get anywhere.”

There was a pause, in which Jack imagined Tosh nodding sagely. _“Keep us posted,”_ she responded a second later.

Another minute and Jack brought the SUV to a halt in front of an innocent looking residential block. It took him a few seconds to realise that he recognised the building; he’d been here before, several times.

And although he hoped his sudden suspicion was wrong, he had a feeling the cause of the current Rift bursts was also one of the reasons he’d been here so often.

“No chance you could narrow down that location at all, could you?” he said into his comms.

 _“Why? Is there a problem?”_ Tosh asked.

“You could say that,” he sighed. “It’s Beech House.”

 _“Why didn’t I notice that? I should have noticed that.”_ Ianto sounded frustrated with himself.

Jack was about to attempt to placate him when Tosh spoke.

 _“What’s Beech House? Why is that important?”_

 _“It’s just a block of flats,”_ Ianto told her. _“But a sizable proportion of our more friendly refugees live there. Jack has a deal with a property developer, or something.”_

“Thus why I’d love it if we could narrow this down a bit,” Jack interrupted their conversation. “Despite what I might hope, the chances are high that it’s one of them causing all of this. Intentionally or not. And I don’t want to have to knock on every single door.”

There was a moment of quiet, and if he strained, Jack thought he could just about hear the clacker of fingers on keyboards.

 _“Sorry,”_ Tosh said. _“We only just managed to get it down to that one building.”_

Jack sighed. “All right. Guess we’re doing this the long way.”

 

Thankfully, the fourth flat they went to bore results. A humanoid alien who had been on Earth for four years now – and was calling himself Allen – had apparently grown tired of the planet and had been determined to find a way to make his way home.

Cobbling together the few small – and supposedly harmless and trivial – pieces of tech they had allowed him to keep when he was integrated into the community, he had managed to create something with the most basic functions of the Rift manipulator.

What he didn’t have were any controls – he could spark a small Rift incident, but not specify the location in Cardiff or where the other end would be. Despite the havoc it had caused, Jack found himself impressed with Allen’s initiative and intelligence. He was almost sorry that he had to confiscate the device.

It didn’t help that Jack felt terribly guilty that he could do nothing of importance for Allen or any of his fellow Rift refugees. Maybe one day Torchwood would have enough knowledge and technology to be able to truly utilise the Rift, but Jack knew he was probably the only one around today who would still be alive to see it.

“I’m really sorry,” he told Allen as they left the flat. “I know you want to go home, and I do wish we could help, but you can’t just mess with the Rift. It’s too dangerous.”

Allen nodded resignedly, and closed the door behind them.

Owen and Gwen were visibly dragging as they made their way back to the SUV, Gwen pointedly looking at her watch and sighing.

Jack glanced at his own – it was approaching five o’clock, and they’d been on the go since shortly after ten; it wasn’t surprising they were lagging a bit.

With his own hope that Ianto would still be looking to talk to him prominent in his mind, they weren’t even halfway back to the Hub before he’d decided to send them home just as soon as everything was unpacked.

Unsurprisingly, not one of Gwen, Owen or Tosh complained at the prospect of getting away at what would be considered by most a ‘normal’ time. Jack could only wait and see if Ianto would leave with them.

He sat at his desk, pushing papers around and attempting to look busy. Ianto appeared a few minutes later, looking as hesitant as Jack felt.

“I…ah… I wanted to talk to you this morning,” Ianto ventured. Jack pushed the papers away and stood up, gesturing towards the sofa where so many of their discussions had taken place in the past.

Ianto sat down, clasping his hands together in his lap. Jack, unsure of his welcome, carefully perched on the other end of the sofa and waited. He really hoped this wasn’t going to be the conversation where Ianto told him he was quitting and asked for the Retcon. He’d imagined that one too often in the last weeks as Ianto pulled further and further away from him.

“I’m sorry,” Ianto said quietly, looking at his hands. Jack forced himself to stay quiet, not to jump to conclusions. _I’m sorry_ could mean almost anything. “I didn’t mean to… get all weird on you.” He looked up, staring at a point behind Jack’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that last week either. Or the week before.”

Jack felt his heart sink. Of course he _knew_ that Ianto regretted it – why else would he have avoided Jack so much the last few weeks – but hearing Ianto actually say that it was a mistake hurt more than he had expected. “It’s okay,” he said, pushing his emotions aside. “You don’t have to…”

“It wasn’t fair on you to jerk you around,” Ianto continued as if he hadn’t even heard Jack. “No matter how much I wanted to do it, I shouldn’t have kissed you only to push you away immediately afterwards.”

Jack froze. Was… was Ianto saying that it _wasn’t_ the kissing him part he was sorry about?

“My head’s been such a mess, but…”

“Ianto, wait,” Jack interrupted, wrapping his hands around Ianto’s. The younger man’s gaze shifted and focussed on his own, his eyes filled with what looked like apprehension. “You’re rambling. Just tell me yes or no: do you regret kissing me?”

Ianto bit his lip. “Yes… and no.”

Which didn’t help Jack at all, but thankfully Ianto elaborated without prompting.

“I wanted to do it,” he started. “But I didn’t _want_ to want to do it.”

Jack took a few seconds to wrap his head around that sentence, still not entirely sure that he understood what Ianto was trying to say, and definitely not sure of where that left them now.

“And it’s not because you’re, well, a man,” Ianto continued. Jack nodded – he’d figured that much out on his own. “I think you’ve probably figured out that you’re not the first man I’ve ever kissed. It’s…” Ianto’s shoulders heaved. “It’s not anything to do with _you_ , actually. I mean, the… not wanting to want to part. Not the wanting part. That’s pretty much all about you.”

Jack couldn’t do much more than stare at Ianto in mild confusion. He still wasn’t really following.

“I just felt guilty,” Ianto eventually said flatly. And _that_ Jack understood. “It’s only been a couple of months, and… it felt like I was betraying her.”

Jack couldn’t say that the same thought hadn’t crossed his mind more than a few times. Almost every time he’d felt his attraction to Ianto surge, in fact. Especially when they’d still been trying to help Lisa.

“I understand,” he said, knowing as he did so that this was probably the end of anything more he might have with Ianto.

Ianto pulled back and took a deep breath. “But then I talked to Tosh this morning. She… told me about what happened to her, with the pendant.”

Jack was surprised; he hadn’t really expected Tosh to tell any of them about that, although if she was going to tell any of them it would be Ianto. “Oh?”

“Well… I’ve been thinking about… us… quite a lot lately, so it’s not surprising that she overheard me worrying. She told me I needed to stop being so hard on myself. And pointed out a few things that I hadn’t been letting myself realise.” He shuffled slightly closer, and Jack wondered if he hadn’t been a bit premature in giving up hope.

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that giving myself the chance to be happy again doesn’t mean I’m forgetting Lisa, or that I love her any less,” Ianto said quietly. His eyes turned fierce, earnest. “I will never forget her, and I will always love her, but… Tosh reminded me that that doesn’t mean I have to stay alone forever.”

He shifted closer again, so their knees were pressed together. Jack only just remembered to breathe. Ianto leant forward, and Jack found himself leaning back. He had to be certain. He had to know, before this went any further.

“Are you absolutely sure that this is what you want? That you’re ready for this?” he asked fervently, trying to quell the tremor in his voice.

Ianto’s hand slid across and wrapped around Jack’s own. “I’m sure,” he said intently, his gaze burning into Jack.

And when he leant in again, Jack didn’t pull away.


	8. Chapter 8

Ianto walked through the cog door into the Hub, his step feeling lighter than it had in weeks. Or months, if he was honest with himself.

Kissing Jack – _properly_ kissing Jack, _intentionally_ kissing Jack – had been… good. Better than good, although he still hadn’t quite decided on the right word to describe it. He had a feeling he probably had a smile on his face.

He knew there was a lot they hadn’t talked about, a lot they probably _should_ have talked about last night, but somehow, pressed against Jack on the sofa as they leisurely explored each other’s mouths, none of it had seemed important.

There had been no inclination to do anything else; Ianto couldn’t be sure of Jack’s feelings on the matter, but this – whatever it was, whatever it would be – almost felt too fragile to rush into headlong.

He glanced up at the desks as the door rolled closed behind him. Tosh was already there, her attention fixed entirely on the screen in front of her as she typed; Ianto assumed that she had probably had a brain wave on the prediction program she’d been developing in the middle of the night, and hadn’t been able to wait any longer to come in and work on it.

She didn’t look up – he doubted she’d even noticed the door opening, despite the sirens.

Jack, however, clearly _had_ noticed his arrival. If he had actually been working on the reports on his desk before, he wasn’t now, his chair pushed back as he smiled genuinely across the Hub at Ianto. There was a part of Ianto that wanted just to bound up the steps and over to Jack, to kiss him again like last night, but he suppressed it.

They were at work – he ignored the fact that it was the same location; last night had been ‘off the clock’ as they said, and didn’t count as at work – and Ianto was determined that this new development wasn’t going to interfere with his professionalism.

Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted their colleagues to know just yet, not while it was so new. Tosh would guess, he knew she would – after all, she had been the one to talk him past his misgivings – but he didn’t want to make it obvious.

Dragging his gaze away, he turned and climbed to the kitchen area to start the first pot of coffee for the day. A cup of hot coffee and a smile, these he _could_ give Jack.

 

There was plenty of work to fill his day. None of the small items of tech that had been discovered the day before had taken much time or effort to identify, so each of them had to be added to the archive system. With a discernible proportion of the archives now actually in some sort of order, Ianto had been developing a procedure to make sure all new additions were stored correctly, with all the associated paperwork filed in the right place and entered onto the database.

He harboured no illusions that the others would necessarily follow this new procedure properly were he absent – he’d seen the mess they’d managed to add to the already chaotic archives before his arrival – but he did hope it would limit the damage.

He found it almost ironic that after more than a week spent mostly in the archives avoiding Jack, now that he would much rather find something to occupy himself up in the Hub where he could surreptitiously watch his boss, he had no choice but to spend the majority of his day in the archives.

 

Tosh had to be almost physically dragged away from her computer keyboard when it came to lunchtime. Given what he now knew about the last time she’d demurred at the mention of lunch together, Ianto wasn’t going to let her skip out on them this time.

He felt rather guilty when, in the course of the afternoon, he realised he hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t realised just how hard the experience must have been on Tosh. Wrapped up in his own angst over Jack, and the effects of Tosh’s temporary ability on _him_ , he hadn’t considered it from the other side.

He didn’t even know how the whole thing had been resolved. Did the others know too, or was he alone in being taken into Tosh’s confidence? No one had mentioned anything over lunch, but given his team-mates, that didn’t mean anything.

He didn’t know either if it was something he should ask Tosh, if it was something she’d want to talk about. It wasn’t that he wanted to know what she'd heard from them and might have talked about – although he couldn’t deny a vague curiosity; there had been moments where he’d longed to know what thought process had led to one action or another, but that was a very different case to hearing _everything_ whether you wanted to or not.

He just didn’t know how he could help her – or even if she wanted or needed help. Tosh could be even more reserved about her troubles than he could be.

By the time he realised that he was going around in circles in his own mind and getting nowhere, it was getting late. Late enough, in fact, that when he finished up with the third-to-last artefact – leaving the remaining two for the next day – and went back up to the Hub, the others had gone.

He prevaricated for a moment. What he _wanted_ to do was go and find Jack; he was sure to be around here somewhere. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was what he _should_ do. If that’s what _Jack_ wanted too. They may have grown very close over the last months, but sometimes Jack was still decidedly an unknown quantity.

The decision was taken out of his hands when Jack appeared just beside him, almost as if out of nowhere.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” Jack said, smiling. “Haven’t seen you for a few hours.”

“Been busy,” Ianto said, responding to Jack’s warm smile with one of his own, without conscious thought. “Nearly finished recording everything you lot dug up yesterday.” He leant sideways and bumped Jack’s shoulder with his own. “Properly recording, that is. Not like that mess every leader of Torchwood Three for the last century appears to have counted as recording.”

Jack nudged him back. “I know, I know. I even read that document you wrote on how to do it. Can’t promise I’ll _do_ it, but…”

Ianto shook his head, suppressing a chuckle. Of all of the team, Jack was the one he least expected to even attempt all of the paperwork involved in the new archiving procedure. He had bribed Jack one too many times into even doing the budgets to expect much more of him when it came to admin.

“So, you heading out?” Jack asked, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

Ianto paused, trying to parse the tone in Jack’s voice. Was he suggesting it, or hoping that Ianto would answer no?

“Well, I’ve finished up for the day,” he eventually said, carefully not indicating one way or the other.

“You couldn’t be tempted into making some coffee, could you?”

Ianto looked at his watch and raised an eyebrow. “At this hour? I know you don’t sleep, but if _I_ have coffee now, I’ll never sleep tonight.”

Jack opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, he clearly thought better of it, as he closed it again without saying anything.

Ianto wracked his brain for the contents of the tiny storage cupboard in the kitchen. “I might be able to rustle us up some hot chocolate instead, if you like,” he said a moment later, hoping that there was still enough milk left in the fridge.

Jack grinned – whether it was the prospect of hot chocolate or just that making it meant he was staying, Ianto couldn’t tell. “If your hot chocolate is half as good as your coffee, count me in.”

Luckily, there was still more than half of the 4 pint bottle of milk in the fridge left, and Ianto listened idly to Jack’s random chatter as he dug out the appropriate equipment from a shelf under the coffee machine.

He nearly hit his head on the shelf above when he jerked involuntarily at a completely outrageous claim Jack was making in the story he was telling. Part of him always wondered how much Jack was making up or embellishing when he started on one of these odd tales; the other part of him knew that with Jack’s history, he couldn’t really discount anything.

It wasn’t until they were settled on the sofa, thighs pressed together, large mugs of hot chocolate in their hands – Jack had been suitably appreciative after his first sip – that Ianto decided to bring up the real topic that had been keeping him busy all day.

“Jack… do you think Tosh…?” He trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase what he wanted to say.

Jack twisted and leaned away from him, squinting at him a bit. “What about Tosh?”

“I told you yesterday,” he replied, “that she told me about the pendant.”

Jack settled against Ianto’s side again, nodding. “Yes. Is something worrying you? Did she do something that…?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Ianto interrupted, pausing. “She… mostly just talked about what she’d heard,” he explained in the end. “Only from me, not anyone else,” he added swiftly. “She didn’t betray any confidences. She just…”

He shook his head, going over the conversation again. “She didn’t really say much about the experience for _her_ – she didn’t even tell me how it ended.”

“I took it off for her,” Jack told him. “She said her head was screaming at her when I did, but I don’t think there was any other way.”

Ianto nodded slowly, taking a long sip from his mug. “Do you think she’s okay now?” he asked uncertainly.

Jack sighed. “I don’t know. I hope she’d say something if she wasn’t. She chose not to have the thing destroyed, which I’m sure says something about how she’s handling the situation.”

Ianto nearly dropped his hot chocolate. “It wasn’t destroyed?”

Jack shook his head.

“Please tell me that it is at least locked up safely in the secure archives,” Ianto said, letting a pleading note enter his voice.

Jack scoffed at him. “Of course. What sort of idiot do you think I am?”

Ianto diplomatically said nothing.

“I’m keeping an eye out,” Jack said after a long moment. “If she says anything, or looks like she’s struggling, I’ll do something, but I…”

“…don’t want to interfere if it’s unwanted,” Ianto finished for him, understanding exactly what he meant. It was the same reason he hadn’t said anything to Tosh himself.

Jack nodded. “She’ll be okay,” he said earnestly. “We’ll make sure of it.”

“I know,” Ianto murmured, setting down his empty mug on the table in front of them. How could he not – it was what Jack and the team had been doing for him for months, almost since the moment he turned up on their doorstep.

He snuggled a little into the arm Jack brought around his shoulders. With a little bit of luck, they just might _all_ be okay.


	9. Chapter 9

“Tosh!” Owen called as he clambered up the steps to the computers. “Are you absolutely sure that the device we took from Chandler and Bell a couple months back was definitely what was causing all those extra Weevil sightings?”

They’d picked up thirteen in the last four days alone, and Owen was beginning to feel like he’d seen quite enough of the back alleys of Cardiff for this week. They were even surfacing in daylight, which was unusual. Although at least it minimised the number of late-night call outs. The few there were, Jack had mostly been handling on his own.

“Quite certain,” Tosh replied, pulling up… something on her screen and gesturing towards it. Owen peered at it, but he wasn’t really sure what Tosh was trying to demonstrate; it just looked like a lot of numbers and graphs to him. “The recent spate of Weevil incidents is entirely down to the Rift; it’s been relatively quiet recently and it seems it’s bouncing back from that now.”

“You getting anywhere on predicting when it might quieten down a bit?” Jack called as he strode up from the cells, looking entirely too happy for a man who had been on just as many Weevil retrievals as Owen had. More, in fact. And yet the cheery grin hadn’t left his face all week. If it kept up much longer, Owen pondered, he might have to confront Jack and ask him just _what_ he was on.

Tosh’s nose wrinkled slightly and she looked deep in thought for a moment. Owen quickly quashed any voices in his head that declared the look adorable. “I think it should be soon, but I can’t say for sure. The latest few tweaks to the program say any time between today and Monday.”

Owen glanced at the display on his watch to check. Yes, today was Friday. He really hoped that the Rift went for ‘today’; another four days of this would just be insane.

“I’m running more thorough scans than usual,” Tosh continued. “Hopefully the data will allow me to refine the prediction. There’s still a lot of work needing done on the program.”

Jack nodded in Owen’s peripheral vision. “Let us know.”

Owen paused for a moment as Jack disappeared into his office, deliberating how to fill his time before the next inevitable Weevil incident. He had a backlog of alien creatures of unknown origins left to autopsy, but when the likelihood of not being able to finish it in one go was as high as it had been lately, he didn’t want to make a start. Half-finished autopsies were such a mess to have to clear away.

He could clean out and reorganise the storage areas in the autopsy bay – Ianto had been pestering him about it on and off for weeks – but, well, the reason Ianto was still pestering him was that Owen really didn’t want to do it. He was rather hoping if he left it long enough, someone else (probably Ianto, seeing as he was the only one who appeared to care) would do it for him.

He wandered aimlessly down to the base of the water tower, watching the water splash into the pool as he wracked his brain for something to do – something _fun_.

He almost slapped his own forehead when it came to him – he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten it. Although it had probably been a year since he’d last even looked at it.

The unit had fallen through the Rift barely meters from the entrance to the Hub garage about eighteen months before. It wasn’t one Owen had recognised from his youth – and none of the others knew enough on the topic to say one way or another – so they’d made the assumption it had found it’s way here from the probably quite near future.

It hadn’t worked at all when they first brought it back to the Hub, but after Suzie and Tosh had poked around inside, they’d declared it fixable, and the project had begun. For the next month, Tosh and Owen had devoted many a quiet hour to restoring the game to working order. Jack had tried to help, but as most of his comments and suggestions had been more trouble than help, they’d quickly discouraged him from continuing.

Once fixed, it had provided entertainment in many a quiet spell – mostly for Owen, but he knew for a fact that the others had all taken a turn or two as well.

It took a few minutes of searching around the main area of the Hub to find the machine. For a moment he rather expected it to be gathering dust, but he realised that at some point over the last few months Ianto had clearly included it in his cleaning rounds. Before that, it probably _had_ been collecting a thick layer of dust and grime.

He gripped at the edges and tried to tug it away from the corner it had been tucked into – there was no way it was playable with the controls pressed against the wall like that. It was no use – it wouldn’t budge. He didn’t remember it being quite as heavy, although he did now remember it taking two of them to put it out of the way in the first place.

He looked around; he couldn’t see Ianto anywhere, but that wasn’t unusual. Owen had only been down to the archives a few times, all before Ianto had joined them, and he wouldn’t fancy the task of tidying them up. Tosh looked immersed in her project – he didn’t fancy having his head handed to him if he disturbed her. Jack would probably welcome the chance to get out of his pile of paperwork, but disturbing him would only bring down _Ianto’s_ wrath on Owen’s head. And he did actually want to be paid this month, after all.

Gwen, however, had that expression on her face that said she was trying to _look_ busy, but was really floundering around for something to do much in the same way Owen had been.

“Oi, Gwen!” he called out. “Come give me a hand with this!”

 

Six hours later and Owen found himself running through the streets of Cardiff again, although at least this time it wasn’t after a Weevil. He didn’t know exactly _what_ it was they were chasing this time, in fact. Tosh had only been able to narrow it down to ‘alien’ so far.

Tosh’s voice sounded in his ear again as he ran. _“Owen. Gwen. Left into the alley, right, thirty meters.”_

Another alley. It was always the alleys – Cardiff just had too many of them, Owen thought occasionally. Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t put them to good use, back when his social life had revolved around _forgetting_ , which meant a lot of alcohol and a lot of girls. The sort of girls who weren’t averse to a fumble in one of said alleys. But that was behind him now; it wasn’t what he wanted for himself.

 _“What is it? What can you see?”_ Although Gwen was barely a couple of metres away, he could only hear her words through the comms. The noise of the crowds around them as the shops closed for the day was drowning everything else out.

A train had arrived at the nearby station just a few minutes earlier, disgorging its passengers onto the streets; some walked purposefully, clearly eager to get home after a long day, but a few lingered. Perhaps waiting on someone. All Owen knew was that they were getting in the way.

 _“I can't get a visual...”_ Tosh replied, sounding frustrated. _“Just a signal. Definitely alien in origin. Diagonal right, towards the castle.”_

Owen swerved around a young couple as he ran in the direction Tosh was pointing them. He ignored the slight pain in his legs, complaining after several days of hard running. Whatever mysterious object or being they were after, it better be worth it.

He cursed under his breath as a group of teenage girls appeared in front of him, bringing him almost to a halt. Gwen sped off ahead of him.

 _“Sharp right, Jack.”_ Owen made his way through the group of girls and started running again, vaguely wondering how close Jack now was.

 _“Any luck on that identification, Tosh?”_ Jack’s voice boomed over the comms.

 _“Sorry, no. Ianto’s scouring the computerised energy signal records for anything similar, and I’m still trying to get a visual. Estimated twenty seconds to contact.”_

Owen pushed in an attempt to make up the distance on Gwen.

 _“Be careful, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here,”_ Jack said. A moment later there was the faint sound of screeching brakes in Owen’s ear, and then Jack was suddenly there just behind him.

 _“Got it!”_ Tosh cried in their ears. _“Visual confirms suspect is a young man in a dark hoodie. Ten seconds to contact.”_

Owen and Jack followed Gwen into one of the shopping arcades. Shops around them were locking their doors, but there were still people milling around, causing an obstruction.

 _“I see him,”_ Gwen panted into the comms.

They all rounded a corner into a quieter passage, narrowly missing a cleaner’s bucket of soapy water.

Owe tried to push himself faster, but Gwen clearly had more left in her reserves after the last week as she pulled further away from them.

He could see what was about to happen before it did, but he was powerless to stop it.

Their target and Gwen both managed to slip under the shutter as it closed. Owen and Jack, just a second later, were caught.

“Open up, open up!” Jack shouted at the man standing at the nearby controls. Owen smacked his palms against the metal for emphasis, rattling it.

 _“It’s no use, I’ve lost him.”_ Gwen’s voice came despondently through their earpieces as they waited for the shutter to begin lifting again.

 _“No, you got it,”_ Tosh told her, sounding surprised at Gwen’s defeated tone. _“Whatever it is, you’re holding it now.”_

Once the bottom of the shutter was a foot or so off the ground, Owen ducked under it, Jack close behind him.

They emerged into the street, dashing off in the direction the young man and Gwen had gone in. They passed an entrance to the train station a few moments later, and even through the milling people, Owen spotted Gwen.

She was a short way down the entrance tunnel to the station, standing stock still with a glazed look on her face and a small device cradled in her hands.


	10. Chapter 10

Ianto looked at the mangled component he’d finally managed to wrangle free from the coffee machine. This was going to have to be replaced before the machine had any hope of functioning again. He’d hoped, when he discovered the fault at lunchtime, that it would be a simple fix, but it seemed he’d been too optimistic. Still, it could have been worse. It _was_ at least repairable.

He glanced briefly at his watch, although he _knew_ it was late – after all, the others had all gone home on that premise, with the promise of picking up again early the following morning. No, everywhere he could think of that might stock the required part was definitely closed by now.

“Jack!” he called down to the sofa, where his… where Jack was slumped, his head resting on the wall behind him. “What did you _do_ to this?” He held up the component.

Jack lifted his head and blinked. “I didn’t do…” he started to deny. His eyes cleared as he clearly noticed the part Ianto was waving. “Ah.”

“Yes, ah”, Ianto responded, waiting.

“I didn’t do anything,” Jack said, sitting up and rolling his shoulders. “Maybe Owen had a…”

“Jack.” Ianto raised an eyebrow as he interrupted him. Did Jack really think that was going to work on him? The guilt was written across his face as clear as day.

He set the piece of metal down on the surface next to the coffee machine and started to walk down to the sofa.

Jack lifted his hands in defeat. “Okay, so I thought I could do it. I’ve watched you do it hundreds of times – and I probably shouldn’t admit quite how often I’ve stared at you while you prepared the coffee but there you go. And it’s just coffee… I knew I could never get anything like _your_ coffee but I thought - how hard could it be to make _something_.”

Ianto stopped in front of him. “If you wanted more coffee making, why didn’t you just come and get me? I was in the archives all morning, hardly out of reach.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you when you were busy, and I didn’t know how long we were going to have before yet another Weevil call came in,” Jack explained, an expression on his face that Ianto guessed was supposed to convey innocence and good intentions, but didn’t quite work on Jack.

“So instead you decided to break the coffee machine,” he said flatly, crossing his arms.

“I think you know I didn’t _mean_ to,” Jack frowned. “I just… did something – what I _thought_ was the right thing – and then it made a strange groaning sound and stopped. I swear you’ve done something to it; it only works for you.”

 _‘It works for me because I took the time to figure out how to operate it,’_ Ianto thought, but didn’t say aloud. “And yet you still thought you’d play with it,” he responded, narrowing his eyes.

Jack bit his lip and looked up pleadingly. “I’m sorry?”

Ianto fought to hold onto his irritation, but it was difficult with Jack looking at him like that. “I’m sure you will be, when I can’t make you any more coffee,” he said, his tone softening despite himself.

Jack’s face fell, as if he hadn’t actually thought that far yet. “But you can fix it, yes?”

Ianto sighed and twisted to drop onto the sofa next to Jack. “Luckily, yes. But not tonight. I’m going to need to find a replacement for the broken part, and I only hope that somewhere nearby will have one in stock. Or we could go weeks before it’s repaired, while I wait on an order.”

Ianto could almost feel Jack’s shudder at that thought. “Do whatever you have to,” Jack said. “ _Pay_ whatever you have to, just fix it. I’m not sure how long I can last without your coffee.”

He slid a hand onto Ianto’s knee; part of Ianto felt that he ought to shrug it off, he was _annoyed_ at Jack after all, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Yes, well I’m not entirely sure I won’t withhold my coffee from you anyway, since you were the one who broke it in the first place.”

Jack leaned closer. “Aww, come on. I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know how, you’ll have to tell me what you want, but I’ll do it.”

“Anything I want?” Ianto would have to think about that one – there were just too many options.

“Anything,” Jack said fervently.

Ianto let himself sway a little bit against Jack. “I’ll hold you to that,” he murmured.

Jack’s fingers squeezed his leg. “Oh I’m counting on it,” he replied, and although Ianto wasn’t looking, he _knew_ the words had been accompanied by at least a hint of a salacious look.

Ianto shifted until he was settled more comfortably against Jack’s side. The traces of irritation he had been trying to hold onto were faded away; Jack _would_ be making up for the mistake, and the Rift, it seemed, had finally fulfilled Tosh’s predictions and had stopped spitting Weevil incidents at them at every turn.

He wasn’t fool enough to pass up the opportunity to actually spend a little time together; events of the last week had meant that, after the first couple of nights, they hadn’t had a chance to do anything but work.

If the machine had been irreparable, that would have been a different story, but it wasn’t, so Jack was safe. For now.

Jack let out a long breath and his head came to rest against Ianto’s shoulder as he stretched his legs out, a slight groan escaping as they straightened.

Ianto wouldn’t be surprised if his legs were aching – Jack had been out on every Weevil call they’d had in the last week, which added up to a lot of running. Even for Jack that had to be exhausting. He could almost – _almost_ – understand why Jack had attempted to make his own coffee.

“Tired?” he asked mildly.

Jack shook his head against his shoulder. “Not really. Just a bit achy. Lot of running and tackling Weevils this week.”

Ianto took a breath. “I should have helped more,” he said quietly.

Jack’s head lifted and he twisted to look at him; Ianto looked back. “What?”

“I know you and the others have been running yourselves ragged this last week,” he elucidated. “And I’ve just been back here quietly sorting the archives and making coffee. I know I’m lacking in field skills – I was practically hopeless in the…”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to name the place. The nightmares hadn’t been as bad or as frequent as he’d feared at first they might be, but they haunted him enough.

“The countryside,” he eventually continued, “but…”

“Stop,” Jack interrupted, freeing his hands and gripping Ianto by the arms. “You did nothing wrong in the Beacons. You and Tosh kept each other alive; you helped Tosh escape. You did a good job.”

Ianto shrugged a little, finding it hard to make himself really believe Jack’s words, although he knew they made sense. “I still let us get captured, though,” he said. “Doesn’t say an awful lot for my ability in the field.”

Jack shook his head, a touch of defeat in his eyes. “If it makes you feel better, we could do some training. Work on the skills you need to use in the field, get you more prepared.”

Ianto paused. If he said yes, if he agreed to this, then there was every chance he’d be asked to go into the field on a more regular basis. Which on one hand, he wanted; the team would be much stronger for having five field agents rather than four, even if they weren’t always all out on a case at the same time. Even if he still spent more of his time running the day-to-day minutiae of the Hub than he did running around the streets of Cardiff. It could only be a good thing.

On the other hand, the thought was mildly terrifying. He _was_ aware that the majority of this probably stemmed from the fact that he _didn’t_ have field training, and might very well change somewhat if he _did_ , but it didn’t change how he felt right at that moment.

Slowly, he nodded. “Okay.”

“Right then,” Jack said decidedly, pushing forwards to press a brief kiss to Ianto’s lips before getting to his feet, pulling Ianto with him. “Come on, then.”

Ianto let Jack tug him through the Hub, although he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. He hadn’t really expected any sort of training to start _right then and there_ , but if that’s what Jack intended, he didn’t have a problem with that.

He didn’t pay particular attention to their direction, caught up in his own thoughts, and blinked as they came to a halt and he looked around. They were in the firing range.

“Why are we here?” he asked, his confusion flooding through into his voice. Whatever he had started to think of when he realised Jack was intending an immediate start, none of it had required the shooting range.

“I know we did weapons training here before, but that was quite a while ago, and you haven’t exactly had much need to practise since,” Jack started, pulling Ianto closer with the hand he had yet to release.

“It may be a small thing, but if you feel more comfortable with one of the weapons in this room, it _will_ increase your confidence in going into field situations in general. Even if you never use it, knowing that you _can_ if you need to will help.”

He dropped Ianto’s hand and went over to the locked cabinet at the back of the tunnel where the practise weapons were kept, leaving Ianto to ponder what he’d said.

It did make a measure of sense, although he strongly suspected that at least some of it was pure bullshitting on Jack’s part.

“Besides,” Jack added, twisting around with two sets of ear protectors looped over his wrist, “it’s too late to start on anything else right now. And I…” He cut himself off abruptly and turned back to the cabinet.

His curiosity peaked, Ianto crossed to stand just behind Jack. “And you…?” he asked leadingly, wondering if Jack would continue with mild prompting or not.

Jack blew out a breath noisily and turned around, leaning against the still closed door on the other side of the cabinet. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, and Ianto thought he might very well turn back around and carry on without saying anything.

“And I enjoyed doing firearms training with you the last time,” Jack eventually said, staring at a point somewhere behind Ianto’s left ear.

Ianto frowned. “You _enjoyed_ it?” he asked. He didn’t know if he wanted to ask Jack just what it had been about the training session he’d enjoyed.

Jack nodded, his eyes sliding across to meet Ianto’s. In them Ianto detected a slight undercurrent of shame, an emotion he was sure many would say wasn’t even in Jack’s lexicon. He tried not to let its presence now worry him, but it wasn’t an easy ask.

There was a long silence, Ianto staring back at Jack and trying to discern his thoughts.

“Okay, I have to ask,” he finally started, deciding it was better to know for sure than to let his mind fill in the blanks on its own.

“It was you, more than the actual training, really,” Jack interrupted, intuiting the question Ianto had been about to ask. “I…well, it was an opportunity to get close to you – not that I thought about it that way when I decided you and Gwen needed training. In fact, if I _had_ thought about it, I might never have gone through with it. It was only supposed to be in order to correct your stance, and after that to unnerve you a bit, distract you, but when it came down to it… being in your personal space like that. I liked it. Too much.”

Ianto blinked as he tried to take in all of the information in Jack’s explanation. “Too much?” he echoed.

Jack took a step closer. “At the time, it really wasn’t appropriate for me to be thinking of you like that.”

Ianto shook his head to clear it. He remembered the previous session, he even remembered that Jack had been close when he’d been shooting, but he’d been concentrating so hard on what he was doing that it hadn’t really registered just _how_ close he’d been. The thought of it now, however, in hindsight… he felt a warmth begin to suffuse him, spreading out from a pit in his stomach.

“I didn’t even notice,” he murmured wonderingly. Jack’s face fell, although it was clear he tried to hide it. “Nothing to do with you personally,” he clarified. “I was just really focused on getting it right; I wouldn’t have noticed anyone.”

Jack nodded. “As hard as that is on my ego…” He paused to flash a grin. “It’s a good thing that you can focus like that. It’s a good field skill, actually.”

“I suppose it’s a start,” Ianto shrugged. If he could move beyond sheer terror to _get_ to focused, that was.

“It is,” Jack said firmly, shaking his shoulders out and handing Ianto the ear protectors. “And as for the rest, that’s what we’re down here for.” He pivoted on his heel and went back to the cabinet, picking out a few things and coming back to lay them on a table next to Ianto.

“All of the handguns are weapons you fired last time, so there’s nothing new to learn,” Jack told him, handing him a clip of ammunition and an unloaded gun. “Just relax and concentrate on the targets.”

Ianto paused for a second before loading the gun, making sure the safety was on before putting it back down so he could put the ear protectors on. Jack had his on too by the time he was set.

“In your own time.” Jack’s voice was a little tinnier than usual, coming through the headphones in the protectors, but the warmth in his tone still came right through.

Ianto eyed up the weevil cut-outs that served as targets, trying to remember all he’d learned about stance the last time.

Before he could take a shot, though, there was a warm hand on his shoulder. “You’re tensing up again,” Jack said quietly, letting his hand drift down Ianto’s back.

Ianto barely suppressed a shiver as Jack’s fingers brushed across a knob of his spine. “That’s not helping,” he muttered.

Jack stepped even closer, almost pressing himself against Ianto. “Who said I was trying to help?”

“Well, this _is_ supposed to be a _training_ session,” Ianto retorted, attempting to quell the rising tide of feeling in his body and find the calm he’d found in the previous training.

“My bad.” The words came through the speakers over Ianto’s ears, but he could feel Jack’s breath on his neck, emphasising just how close he was.

Taking deep breaths, he poured all of his concentration into lining up the shot, determined he wasn’t going to let Jack get to him. Not when he knew that at least _part_ of the reason Jack was so close was precisely in an attempt to distract him from the shot.

He squeezed the trigger several times in quick succession; the shots hit the target, although he couldn’t see exactly how good or bad they were from this distance.

“Good,” Jack said quietly, moving away just far enough for Ianto to re-engage the safety, twist around and put the handgun back on the table. Jack handed him a slightly larger calibre weapon, folding Ianto’s fingers around the handle with his own. “Now try this one, and this time I want you to aim for the lowest target.”

Ianto nodded and turned back to face down the tunnel. To his mild surprise, Jack didn’t press up against him again, choosing instead to linger just on Ianto’s peripheral vision.

The heavier weapon had more of a kick to it, and the first time he fired the shock travelled right up his arm to his shoulder before he consciously remembered to relax.

“Here,” Jack said after he fired the final shot, “let me take that.”

Ianto relinquished the gun when Jack’s hand came out, and he brought his own hands up, pushing the ear protectors down around his neck and breathing a sigh of relief as the cool air of the tunnel hit his ears again.

“Yeah,” Jack chuckled, “they can be a bit hot, can’t they?” When he stepped back into Ianto’s field of vision Ianto could see he’d done the same. “Let’s go check out how you did then, yeah?”

He took Ianto’s hand as they walked down the tunnel to the now riddled-with-holes Weevil target.

Ianto couldn’t remember exactly where the holes in the targets had been the last time, but he was fairly sure they were at least a little closer to the centres of the targets this time around. They still weren’t brilliant though; he doubted he’d ever be a crack shot.

“Looking pretty good,” said Jack, crouching down to look more closely at the bullet holes in the lower target. “You’re better than you think you are.”

“Not _that_ good though,” Ianto replied, pointing out the one bullet that had missed the target completely, hitting the cardboard cut-out in the middle, somewhere around the cardboard Weevil’s gut.

“Practice is all that is,” Jack said, straightening and giving him a grin. “Few more sessions and even your odd stray shot will be fantastic.”

“If you say so.” Ianto wasn’t entirely convinced.

Jack suddenly stopped still. “Did I show you and Gwen the stun guns the last time?”

Ianto shook his head. It had been projectile weapons only, he was absolutely certain of it. “Nope.”

Jack’s grin grew wider. “I think you’re going to like this.”

Ianto let himself be dragged back to the top end of the tunnel by their joined hands. Jack handed him a chunky gun with a solid round muzzle. Instead of a revolver chamber, ammunition clip or loading chamber, it had a multitude of switches on one side.

“It’s very loosely based on current taser technology,” Jack said, pulling the ear protectors from around his neck and putting them down on the table. “And when I say very loosely, I mean _very_ loosely. This thing is a heck of a lot more adjustable than anything on the market these days.”

Ianto weighed it in his hand, twisting it to study the business end for a moment. There was nothing there to suggest anything would come out of it that travelled anywhere through the air. “I’m assuming that you have to get close enough to actually make contact with your intended target.”

Jack nodded. “Yep, requires skin contact. Which has the advantage that it’s pretty much impossible to miss, although it’s rather harder to get into position.”

Which was patently obvious, but Ianto knew Jack liked to state such things occasionally. He hadn’t quite figured out why, yet, but he was confident that one day he would. Instead of pointing any of this out to Jack, however, he turned his attention back to the multitude of controls. “What happens if you get the settings wrong?”

Jack shrugged one shoulder. “Someone’s out for longer or shorter than you expected, that’s all. It’s guaranteed non-fatal. It has automatic fail-safes that make sure of it.”

Ianto had to admit he liked the sound of that. He liked the sound of pretty much everything about this particular little bit of tech, actually. An idea struck him and he looked up at Jack speculatively, a sly grin spreading across his face. He double checked the power switch on the side to make sure it was set to ‘off’ before he said anything.

“So, you’ve tested it exhaustively then, I take it,” he started. “Put your own seal of approval on that guarantee?” He jabbed in Jack’s direction with the stun gun.

Jack dropped his hand and backed up a few steps. “Ianto?” he said, his voice wary. “What are you doing?”

Ianto followed, keeping himself close to Jack. “What? It was a perfectly logical question,” he said with all of the faux-innocence he could muster.

Jack’s eyes narrowed and he took another step back, the backs of his thighs colliding with the table. “I…” He stopped, and a moment later Ianto could see the light dawning in his eyes as he caught Ianto’s true intent.

Ianto advanced another step, and Jack ducked to the side, skirting around the table, his eyes locked on Ianto, clearly intent on anticipating his every move. Ianto stared back.

He feinted to the left before diving around the table on the right, but Jack was too quick and darted away from the table completely, travelling down the tunnel a short distance.

By the time Ianto had made his own way around the table, Jack had slipped in behind one of the unmarked Weevil targets. Oh yes, this was definitely on.

For every move Ianto made after him, Jack was just a shade faster, dodging out of the way just before Ianto could get a hold on him.

Ianto was breathless and giddy by the time he spotted his chance. Forgoing the feinting and darting, he simply ran into Jack, rushing him against the wall.

Jack oofed as his back hit the wall, Ianto colliding with him full-body a fraction of a second later.

“Gotcha,” Ianto panted, his wrists resting against Jack’s shoulders, holding him in position.

“You certainly do,” Jack exhaled, his eyes darkening as they breathed in each other’s faces.

Ianto felt his body ignite as Jack’s chest rose and fell against his own, their breathing not slowing any even as they recovered from the exertion of the chase.

It was barely the work of a few centimetres to fit his mouth against Jack’s; Jack’s lips fell open beneath his own almost instantly and Ianto took what he was offering, devouring Jack’s mouth in a voracious kiss.

Dimly, he managed to keep a hold on the stun gun instead of letting it fall to the floor, but he was grateful when Jack’s hands scrambled for his own, taking the gun and dropping it to the floor from a lower point, freeing Ianto’s hands to clasp onto Jack’s shoulders tightly.

As soon as the stun gun was gone, Jack’s hands were suddenly everywhere – in his hair, across his back, gripping his arse to pull them even closer together. Ianto could feel all the blood rushing to his groin, his brain synapses shutting down one by one.

“Jack…” Ianto muttered hoarsely as they broke for breath momentarily, “I…” The temptation of Jack’s lidded-stare and swollen lips was too much and he didn’t complete the sentence, choosing instead to dive back in, wrapping his tongue around Jack’s and swallowing the resulting guttural groan.

He pressed closer and closer, but it just wasn’t close enough. He ran his hands down Jack’s sides, searching for the point where his shirt disappeared under his trousers. Finding it, he tugged it free as far as he could; he couldn’t bring himself to pull back enough to free the front.

He grumbled in frustration as he dove his fingers under the back of the freed shirt only to remember that Jack always wore a T-shirt under it, which also had to be twisted out of the way before he could reach actual skin. _Too many bloody layers_ , he grumbled mentally.

Jack’s skin burned beneath his fingers when he finally got to it, and even better was the low choked moan it evoked from Jack. A moment later, he couldn’t control his own as Jack followed his lead, his hands sweeping up under Ianto’s newly untucked dress shirt.

How they’d made it even this far without this contact was a mystery to Ianto, and he had too few brain cells still functioning to work it out.

“This off, now” Jack muttered, pulling back. Ianto’s body complained at the loss of Jack’s lips on his own and at the disappearance of Jack’s clever fingers from his back, but his mind caught up a few seconds later as Jack started fumbling at his tie, undoing the knot so he could start on the buttons below.

He tugged at Jack’s shirt, freeing the rest of it from his trousers and pulling buttons from their holes with trembling fingers. He barely had it unbuttoned – and there was still that damn T-shirt in the way – by the time Jack had finished with his, his head ducking to press his mouth against clavicle in a move that sent Ianto’s heart rate through the roof.

Fingers desperate now, he shoved Jack’s braces from his shoulders, swiftly followed by his shirt. Getting Jack out of the T-shirt proved a little more difficult, and unfortunately involved dragging Jack’s lips from their exploration of Ianto’s upper chest, but it was worth it for that first moment of pressing back against Jack’s body with nothing between their chests but hot, tingling skin.

Their lips gravitated back together, hands touching whatever bit of skin they could as they writhed against each other. Ianto was hard as a rock underneath his trousers, and every time he tilted his hips against Jack he could feel that he was in much the same condition.

When Jack’s fingers squeezed between them to work at Ianto’s belt, all Ianto could do was think ‘yes, _yes_ ,’ and do his best to tug Jack’s belt buckle out of its own hole with fingers that wouldn’t quite follow his commands.

Jack paused with his fingers on Ianto’s button and pulled back, leaving Ianto to stare at him confusedly. “Are you sure about this?” he rushed out all on one short breath, his eyes almost black with intensity.

The words took a moment to filter through Ianto’s mind, but as soon as they did, he raised his eyebrows, sending Jack his best ‘are you a complete idiot?’ look and leaning forward to bite down gently on Jack’s bottom lip. Why on Earth wouldn’t he be sure about _this_?

He sought to further dispel any doubts Jack might have about what Ianto wanted by popping _Jack’s_ trousers button and slipping his hand inside, curving his fingers around the length of Jack’s erection through his boxers.

Jack’s mind was clearly eased, as before Ianto could even register the movement, he had Ianto’s trousers undone and had bypassed his boxers too, wrapping his hand directly around Ianto’s cock. Ianto had to steel himself not to explode right there on the spot.

A quick twist of his wrist loosened Jack’s zipper, giving Ianto the freedom to urge them down around hips, which in turn allowed him to free Jack’s cock, smoothing his thumb over the already leaking tip.

“God, Ianto,” Jack growled, his head falling back. “You…” With a throaty moan, he manoeuvred them around until he could press his erection against Ianto’s.

Ianto let his head drop forward, and he latched onto Jack’s shoulder to help him regain some measure of control. The hot pressure of Jack’s cock against his own in the circle of their hands was almost overwhelming; it was a long time since he’d felt anything quite like it.

Involuntarily, he jerked his hips, setting up a slick friction between his cock and Jack’s that threatened to completely short out his brain.

Jack was muttering under his breath, and it took Ianto a long moment to work out that it was his name.

As he felt the edge approaching, he gripped the back of Jack’s neck with his free hand, his fingertips twisting in the short hair there, and pulled him back into a deep and sloppy kiss.

Their movements against each other became more and more uncoordinated but Ianto was past the point where it mattered. He felt Jack shudder and moan into his mouth, spilling hotly over their hands, and followed him into the abyss a moment later, Jack’s name a muffled cry on his lips.

When Ianto regained his senses, he and Jack were sitting next to each other on the floor, leaning back against the wall. He had no idea how they’d gotten to that position; he didn’t have the energy to care.

Wordlessly, Jack handed him his discarded T-shirt to clean up with. Ianto turned his head to look at Jack, and was met with a relaxed, sated grin that he suspected matched his own perfectly.

“Okay, I don’t know about the gun training bit,” Ianto started nonchalantly, leaning into Jack’s shoulder a little. “But we are definitely doing _that_ again.”


	11. Chapter 11

Ianto had a wide smile on his face as he stepped into the Hub for the day. He knew there was probably a long day ahead of them – there was still a lot they didn’t know about whatever it was the team had found the night before – but he was in too good a mood to care.

He was later in than he would usually be, and a quick glance around told him that Tosh had beaten him in, and was already at her desk working on… he wasn’t sure what. Although her presence put paid to the possibility of greeting Jack with a ‘proper’ good morning – he was sure Tosh would figure it out but didn’t want to make it _too_ obvious quite yet – it didn’t wipe the smile from his face.

He could probably have been in earlier, more akin to his usual time, but it had been very late by the time he and Jack had roused themselves sufficiently to get up off the shooting range floor and redress and clean up properly. It had been later still by the time Ianto, tired, contented and with lips swollen from the rather extensive goodnight kiss he and Jack had shared, finally went home.

He bounded up to the kitchen area, more than ready to make a start on the day. It wasn’t until he saw the partially dismantled coffee machine that he remembered that part of the day before. There was no way that machine was producing coffee until he managed to find a supplier for the broken part.

“Morning,” Jack said, materialising behind him.

Ianto spun around, wondering how Jack had managed to sneak up on him; he was usually paying better attention than that. “Morning,” he smiled.

The warm look in Jack’s eyes told Ianto that he wanted to kiss Ianto good morning just as much as Ianto wanted him to do it, but they both knew they couldn’t, not right now.

“If you’re looking for a coffee,” Ianto said instead, “I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Since you broke the machine yesterday, if you remember.”

Jack pouted at the reminder.

“Unless there’s something else you urgently need me for this morning,” Ianto said. “While you figure out what’s going on with that thing you picked up last night, I’ll go out and find somewhere that stocks the part I need and fix it up.”

Jack shook his head quickly. “No, fix the coffee machine. Whatever else we might need you for, we’ll manage. The coffee is more important.”

Ianto smirked a little. Some days he wondered if it was really a good thing that he enabled the caffeine addictions of the team, but given that he was just as bad, he wasn’t about to stop.

“Will do,” he nodded, consciously encasing himself in his professional mask for the day. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need me for.”

Jack quirked an eyebrow and leered a bit at that, but said nothing.

When Gwen arrived, followed in quick succession by Owen, and Jack disappeared to hold some sort of discussion about what to do next in their quest to discover more about the mysterious tech they’d picked up the night before, Ianto pulled out a pristine copy of the Cardiff and West Valleys Yellow Pages.

 

Ninety minutes later, he sighed and put down the phone after yet another fruitless conversation. It didn’t help that he wasn’t actually sure of the technical name for the part, and given the extent of modification that had been done on the machine since it was first bought, quoting the model number etched on the bottom edge was useless.

It had taken a minimum of several minutes discussion with each of the possible suppliers he’d managed to get on the phone for them to understand what he was looking for, which wouldn’t be a problem if any of them had actually _had_ it.

He was down to only… he drew his finger down the page, counting swiftly… six possible sources. If he still had no luck, he might have to start looking further afield.

Like Newport.

He glanced at his watch. It was nearly half past ten, and he’d heard the others come clattering back in from wherever they’d disappeared off to just ten or fifteen minutes before.

He suspected they were beginning to feel the effects of the coffee deprivation as much as (or more than) he was, and put down the thick yellow book. He’d come back to the final six later, right at that moment, he was going to source them some coffee.

He paused for a moment as he stepped out of the tourist information office into the rare early autumn sunshine. There were several coffee shops within easy walking distance, but it took a bit of thought to decide which of them generally had the most palatable coffee.

Decision made, he started climbing the stairs towards the Plass, surprised when he met a small crowd of people heading the other way. The street at the top was just as busy and it was a second before he realised why; it was Saturday. Saturday, when other people – those for whom weekends actually meant something – went shopping and met friends in town.

His quickly formed suspicions were confirmed when he got to the coffee shop of his choice – the queue was almost out the door. He knew he could go somewhere else, but the coffee wouldn’t be as good, and the queues were hardly likely to be much shorter.

He inched forward slowly as the queue moved. He was glad he wasn’t going to be attempting to find somewhere to sit in the café once he had his coffees, as he knew the tables were bound to be crammed.

In a crafty move by the shop, it was necessary to walk past all of the displays of snack and bakery items in order to get to the counter. And Ianto hadn’t eaten any breakfast.

So it really wasn’t entirely his fault that, when he _finally_ made it to the front of the queue more than ten minutes later, he found himself not only ordering five cups of coffee, but also five jammy doughnuts.

He walked back to the Hub as quickly as he could, skirting around dawdling crowds of shoppers in an attempt not to let the coffees grow entirely cold by the time he got back. More than once someone nearly knocked into him and tipped over his carefully balanced tray of cardboard cups.

He caught what appeared to be the tail end of a description as he climbed the steps in the Hub towards Jack’s office, where the team had congregated.

“…of convictions - burglary, shoplifting, credit cards ...” Gwen was saying as she took a seat.

Ianto could only assume they were talking about the kid that had got away the night before, as there had been talk of finding him the night before. He recognised the description, he remembered kids like that. Hell, he remembered _being_ a kid like that, even if he only got caught just the once. He knew the mentality intimately.

“Do warn me if he’s going to be dropping in,” he said mildly; not everything could be nailed down, but most of it could be moved.

His words brought a few heads up, the team finally noticing that he’d appeared.

Tosh held up a piece of paper from the manila folder she’d been rifling through, laughing a little as Ianto skirted the desk and handed Jack his coffee, holding out the paper bag containing the doughnuts. “I’m not sure how much we should read into that record… the theft conviction – he was attempting to nick the tyres from a car when the owner came back, frightens the kid enough that he apologises and puts them back on for him, which of course is when the police finally arrive.”

She paused to accept the coffee and doughnut Ianto was holding out for her. “Thanks, Ianto. And as for the shoplifting… a bottle of vodka and three Pot Noodles.”

Owen snorted, nodding his thanks in turn at the hot beverage and sticky snack offered. “So we’re clearly dealing with a real criminal mastermind here.”

Ianto kept silent with his thought that, as with his own experience, that might just be all he’d been _caught_ doing, and handed Gwen her cup and the last but one doughnut.

“So what’s our next move then?” Tosh asked, taking a sip of coffee and sighing a little as the caffeine entered her system.

“Where does this Bernie kid live?” Jack asked in turn, taking a huge messy bite from his doughnut. Ianto took a bite of his own to distract himself from the very lickable dribble of raspberry jam that had escaped from the corner of Jack’s mouth.

Tosh flipped a page in her file with her pinkie, trying not to get jam or sugar on it. “Splott.”

“Splott,” Owen repeated, sounding as if he was trying to remember quite where that was.

Ianto remembered quite perfectly where Splott was. While it wasn’t an area he’d frequented at all growing up – it would have taken quite the trek across Cardiff and there wasn’t anything there particularly worth going for – he’d seen several flats there when he’d first moved back to Cardiff with Lisa.

It wasn’t the most sought after area, so the rents had been far more affordable than in some other places, although some had still been out of his price range. He stifled a chuckle as he remembered one particular estate agent who’d shown him around a few of them. “I believe estate agents call it ‘Sploe’,” he said, looking to the ceiling and stuffing another bite of doughnut into his mouth before he released an entirely undignified giggle.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Jack said – Ianto could tell that he was still chewing a piece of doughnut while speaking even without looking at him - “that’s where we start. Home address, relatives, pubs, street corners, parks. He has to be somewhere.”

“When do we go?” Gwen asked, taking a sip of coffee.

Jack stuffed the rest of his doughnut into his mouth, clearly catching Ianto’s look of disapproval when he opened his mouth, closing it and swallowing before saying anything. “Now.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.

There were several minutes of hustle after that, the rest of the team trying to finish their coffees and snacks quickly while they bustled around getting ready to leave with Jack.

“How’s the machine repair going?” Jack asked quietly after the rest of the team had cleared the office.

Ianto grimaced. “You don’t want to know.” He really, really hoped that one of these last places would prove more help than any of those he’d already tried.

“That good, huh?” Jack reached out and rubbed a hand across his arm in commiseration. Ianto leaned into the touch almost imperceptibly, mindful that the rest of the team were just on the other side of a transparent wall.

“I’m sure I’ll find the part eventually,” Ianto sighed. “It’s just… taking a little bit more time and effort than I’d hoped.”

Jack opened his mouth as if to reply, but he was cut off before he could say anything.

“Oi! You ready then?” Owen called from the other side of the raised office area, Gwen and Tosh standing next to him, all looking ready to leave.

Jack straightened and, sparing no more than a warm look for Ianto, grabbed his coat and joined them as they left.

Ianto finished his coffee and doughnut at a slightly more leisurely pace before clearing up the empty cups that had been left scattered around the place and returning to the Yellow Pages and the phone.

He was feeling more than a little desperate by the time he phoned the last but one entry in the directory. Hence he began to wonder, after hanging up on the helpful store employee, if he hadn’t been just a little bit _too_ enthusiastic in his gratitude to them for having the part he required.

He jotted down the address on a notepad, just in case his usually reliable memory failed him this once, and headed for his car, making a brief detour on his way out of the Hub to pick up the broken part for comparison purposes. In Saturday lunchtime traffic, he suspected the journey was going to take at least 45 minutes – if not an hour or more – either way, but if this part really _was_ the one he needed to restore the coffee machine to working order, it would be worth it.

 

Just over two hours later, he was barely in the door at the Hub – necessary machine part in hand – when his phone rang.

 _“Have you eaten?”_ Jack said the moment he picked up, dispensing with greetings entirely.

“Hello to you too, Jack,” Ianto replied, rolling his eyes a little even when he knew there was no one to see it. “And no, not yet, but it’s only…” He glanced down at his watch. Oops.

 _“Nearly a quarter to three,”_ Jack finished for him. _“I thought as much. You need to eat, Ianto, even if you’re not feeding the rest of us.”_

“I _know_ that, Jack,” Ianto said patiently. “But I’ve been busy. I only just got back from a two hour jaunt to pick up the part I need for this repair. I haven’t had time to eat.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. _“All right,”_ Jack eventually said, sounding suspicious. _“As long as you **do** eat something. I can’t have you wasting away on me.”_ There was another, shorter, less suspicious pause. _“Especially not now,”_ Jack added softly, the unspoken meaning clear.

“I promise,” Ianto assured him. “I’ll go out and get something to eat just as soon as I’ve dropped off the new part, before I start fitting it, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack accepted. “Just see that you do. If I get back later and you haven’t, I’ll… decide then what to do. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye,” Ianto responded just as Jack hung up.

He set the new part down on top of the coffee machine and considered his options. There was a large part of him that wanted to get going on this _now_ , and have the machine fixed just as soon as possible. But he _had_ promised Jack he’d go and eat.

As interesting as Jack’s ‘punishment’ for breaking that promise might be, Ianto decided not to risk it, heading back out of the Hub for the third time that day.


	12. Chapter 12

Jack waited impatiently for the cog door to roll back, the… _whatever_ it was weighing heavy in his coat pocket. They had to figure out what this thing was, and soon. There were still a few scans to try out on it, and he hoped one of them came up with something.

Owen had clearly been deeply affected by whatever he had seen – or experienced, Jack wasn’t sure how it should be described. Jack’s previous plan of a controlled experiment had therefore been thrown right out of the window; he wasn’t risking putting any more of his team through that.

As the door rolled back and allowed them entry to the Hub, he wrapped his fingers around it in his pocket. He knew that the others all followed him through the door, but he paid them little heed. Not even stopping to take his coat off first, he strode purposefully across the space and placed the tech inside one of the remaining untried scanners, pressing the ‘Start’ switch. The sooner they had more information, the better.

As he shrugged his coat off, hanging it up in his office, he looked around. Ianto was nowhere in sight, and Jack hoped he wasn’t still struggling to find the part he needed to fix the coffee machine. He’d sounded rather frustrated with the process when he’d talked to him early that afternoon.

He also hoped Ianto had stuck to his word and eaten something, but he didn’t have time to go and find him to check. There was a mystery to solve.

He turned back and watched the monitor attached to the scanner for a few seconds. It was still displaying a swirling graphic that indicated the scan was in progress. The team bustled around him, gathering together everything they’d discovered about the item and all of the associated people so far.

He turned away before he could become mesmerised by the swirls and watched the team settle, gathering his thoughts.

“So,” he started, “the first time, it happens to Gwen. Small boy, at the railway station.”

Gwen had a handful of documents and photographs and was busy sticking them up on the glass panel they’d long since abandoned to any other purpose. “Who is now in his 70s, alive and well and living in Butetown.”

Jack nodded thoughtfully. The discovery that Thomas Flannigan was a real man, that the events that Gwen had seen mimicked exactly those that had actually happened, had crossed a lot of possibilities off the list already.

“And then today, it happens to Owen, under the bridge,” Gwen continued. She finished sticking up the last sheet of paper and walked towards Owen. “And just like me, you didn’t just see it, did you? You felt it, emotions that weren’t your own.”

Owen nodded, a mixture of sadness and anger on his face. “She was terrified.”

Just another clue that all added up to… Jack still didn’t know what. “Victim’s name was Lizzie, yes?” He looked at Owen for confirmation. “About 40, 45 years ago. What can we find out about her, Tosh?”

Tosh was typing search terms into a program that searched old police reports and birth and death records. It took barely a second to spit out a result. “Elizabeth Lewis,” she read from the screen. “Known as Lizzie. Only child of Mabel Ann Lewis of Hafod Street. Died March 29th, 1963. Raped and murdered. Her body was found on Penfro Street, under the bridge. Seventeen years old.”

Jack felt his heart sink. Seventeen, far too young. And no one deserved to go out like that.

“He killed her,” Owen spat out, clearly angry at the news.

Tosh had scrolled down further on her report. “No one was brought to trial,” she told them.

When he looked at Owen, Jack wasn’t sure he’d even heard the words; he was clearly drifting into a world of his own, into the memory of that afternoon. “She told her mum she’d be home by nine,” he said in a faraway voice. He straightened a moment later, back in the room. “Ed Morgan. What about him? That’s what she called him. ‘You’re a bad one, Ed Morgan,’ she said. Look him up.”

“It’s kind of a common name,” Tosh said, voice filled with doubt as she started to type the name into a search anyway.

“So where’s the connection?” Gwen asked, looking confused. “Where are they coming from? It’s like they’re haunting the places, or something.”

There was a quiet beep from the scanner behind him, and Jack spun to look at the results. He bent forward for a moment to take a closer look at the nano-circuit it had highlighted and nearly kicked himself. Of course! “Quantum transducer!” he called out. “Look!” He pointed at the circuit in question.

Tosh was by his side in a flash, studying the screen intently. “Wow,” she whispered reverently. “I’d _kill_ for one of those.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack caught Gwen shooting Owen an utterly clueless look. Clearly Tosh had caught it too, as she straightened and explained for them. “Transducers convert one form of energy into another,” she started. “You find them in headphones, where they convert electrical energy into sound. In this device, they’re converting and amplifying quantum energy.”

“Into ghosts?” Gwen asked unsurely. Jack could tell she wasn’t convinced.

“Yes,” he said simply, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “It’s… it’s emotion. Human emotion is energy. You can’t usually see it, or hear it, but you can feel it.”

Tosh left his side and went to clear a space among the papers and folders Owen was still flicking through.

“Did you ever feel like someone was watching you in an empty room? Had déjà vu? Felt like someone had ‘walked over your grave’?”

Gwen nodded, still clearly uncertain about where he was going with this.

“Well that’s because there _was_ ,” Jack explained. “The energy from that emotion is still there, waiting.”

“A ghost,” Gwen said slowly.

He nodded. “A ghost.”

There was a moment of silence and he could almost see the cogs spinning in Gwen’s head as she tried to fit this new information into her world order.

“So what else do we have, then?” Owen said, breaking the stillness that had settled in that moment. “On Lizzie Lewis.”

Tosh shook her head doubtfully. “Well, it was 1963… they didn’t always keep the most detailed of…”

“There must be _something_ ,” Owen interrupted her intently. “Newspaper reports, witness statements, coroner’s findings…”

Jack sighed internally. He didn’t know what Owen thought he was going to accomplish with any of this.

“What exactly do you want me to find, Owen?” Tosh asked, echoing Jack’s thoughts.

“Something,” Owen cried. “Anything. Anything we can use.”

“If the case was going to be re-opened, you’d need new evidence,” Jack warned, hoping to pull Owen back a bit before he went too far, before he got too invested in an impossible solution. “Or a new witness coming forward.”

“I saw it!” Owen said, shifting forward.

Jack shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You saw an echo of a moment from the past, amplified by alien technology. How exactly do you think that one’s going to go over in court?”

“Since when did we care about the courts?” Owen burst out.

Jack bit his lip. Owen had at least part of a point; they didn’t usually worry about what would or could stand up in court. But then, they were usually dealing with either alien criminals or human criminals committing crime strongly related to aliens or alien devices. This crime, despite the insight Owen had gained with alien tech, was rightly the work of the police.

It wasn’t their place to interfere, not this time.

“Tomorrow,” he said slowly, “we’re going to go looking for this Bernie Harris again, and we’re going to find out what he knows about the tech, the… ghost machine. Find out where it came from. Do our job.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Right now, go home.”

Gwen looked at her watch, obviously surprised. “Really?”

Jack nodded. “Really. Now get out of here before I change my mind.” He shooed them away with a grin.

Neither Owen or Tosh looked as pleased with the early finish as he’d have expected or hoped, but Gwen’s smile split her face; she was clearly looking forward to being home early enough to spend some actual time with her boyfriend.

Jack knew that despite his best efforts, she didn’t always get enough opportunity to do that. Torchwood was hard on relationships, especially where one partner was completely in the dark. Maybe, possibly in the future… that was something to think about another time. Rhys – who he’d finally placed days after ‘meeting’ him at Ianto’s fated birthday party – didn’t seem the type to go running screaming to the masses, but they couldn’t be too careful.

He watched Gwen, Tosh and Owen gather belongings for a few moments before turning and heading towards the rest of the Hub. Ianto had to be around here _somewhere_.

His first instinct – to head for the kitchen area – proved to be the correct one, and he was rewarded with an Ianto who had shucked his jacket and tie and had rolled his shirt sleeves up to the elbows.

He… he looked like he was trying to _sweet talk_ a panel of the coffee machine into slotting back into place.

“All fixed, then?” he asked lightly, stepping close.

Ianto didn’t jump; despite his apparent immersion in his work, Jack knew he’d probably been aware of them all since they got back to the Hub.

“Just about,” he replied, straightening and rolling his shoulders. “The broken part is replaced, and if I could just get this final part back on, in theory it should be fully operational again.”

Jack reached out and, with a hand on Ianto’s shoulder, spun him so they were face to face. The look on Ianto’s face screamed frustration.

“Is the machine going to suffer if you leave it now and come back to it fresh in the morning?” he asked plainly.

Ianto’s mouth twisted. “Well, no, but…”

“But you’ll be less tired and frustrated in the morning, and will probably find it slides in easily for you,” Jack interrupted before Ianto could complain about not finishing the task in one day. He slid his hand down Ianto’s arm from his shoulder to grasp his hand. “Right this minute, you have two options.”

He took a few steps backwards, pulling Ianto along behind him. Ianto tilted his head in mock-thoughtfulness and didn’t resist. “And those would be?” he demanded playfully.

“One,” Jack started, pausing at the top of the steps, “you can go home. Or two, you can stick around here and keep me company for a bit.” He made no effort at all in disguising his preference in Ianto’s choice.

Ianto hummed musingly. “I may have to think about this one,” he said. “On the one hand, if I stay here I get to spend time with you. But on the other hand, if I stay here…” He pulled his head back and put on a clearly-exaggerated expression of distaste. “I get to spend time with _you_.”

Jack pouted even more theatrically. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were supposed to like me.”

“Well, I do,” Ianto grinned, stepping in closer again. “But I’m reserving the right to change my mind.”

Although it was clearly meant in a joking fashion, the thought that it could actually happen suddenly hit Jack hard in the gut. After everything that had happened, he certainly wouldn’t be able to blame Ianto if he did, but just the thought of it…

He tugged Ianto closer, gripping him gently by the upper arms. “While you are entirely within your rights to do so,” he said softly, a note of pleading slipping into his voice despite his best efforts. “Please don’t?”

Ianto blew out a breath slowly, his eyes closing for a long moment. “Jack,” he said intently, looking him right in the eye. “Trust me when I say it took a lot of thought for me to come to this decision in the first place. I won’t turn my back on this lightly, I promise.”

The tight knot in Jack’s stomach didn’t completely dissolve, but it eased significantly at Ianto’s clear statement of intent. “Good,” he whispered harshly. “I…” He couldn’t help but push forward, pressing a chaste but tender kiss to Ianto’s lips. “Good.”

He rested his forehead on Ianto’s, closing his eyes as his heart rate stabilised.

“If I’m staying,” Ianto said after a minute’s silence, “Then I’m going to have to insist we go sit down. Before one of us ends up falling down these steps.”

Jack nodded, having forgotten entirely that they were still standing at the top of said steps.

They separated to make their way across the Hub, settling down together on the sofa, more closely than their long familiar positions.

“So,” Ianto started eventually, leaning slightly into Jack. “While I’ve been battling the innards of the coffee machine, how did things go out in Splott?”

“Well, we didn’t find the kid,” Jack said, his frustration from earlier in the day seeping through just a little. “But we did inadvertently get another demonstration of the workings of the machine.”

Ianto nodded. “Yeah, I heard you all talking about it when you came in, although I couldn’t make out enough to work out what had actually happened.”

“Owen pressed the button,” Jack replied; he still wasn’t entirely sure what had brought Owen to do it. There was nothing in what they’d discovered of the tech so far that would suggest it actually exerted any influence over the holder pressuring them to use it. And goodness knows they’d had enough of _that_ already this month.

“And?”

“He saw… well, he saw the beginning of what we discovered when we got back turned into the rape and murder of a young girl, back in the 60s.”

He could almost physically feel Ianto just stop at the revelation. “Ah.”

“It’s awful, horrible,” Jack added when the silence began to stretch out. “And I wish that poor young girl hadn’t had to go through that, but there’s nothing we can do.”

“Let me guess,” Ianto said flatly. “Owen isn’t seeing it that way. He needs to find a way to help. It’s who he is.”

Jack nodded. “I can’t blame him, really, after what he saw, but… I have to say I’m worried.”

Ianto twisted so they could look at each other properly face to face as they talked. “About Owen, or about what he might do?”

“Both,” Jack replied immediately; he hadn’t actually considered the question until Ianto asked it, but it hadn’t taken any conscious thought to reach a conclusion. “Either he’ll find out that there’s absolutely nothing he can do to help, or he’s going to find something incredibly stupid to do that _might_ possibly help but also might backfire drastically.”

“Despite outwards appearances, Owen’s got a bit of sense,” Ianto reassured him. “I’m sure he’ll do the right thing.”

Jack wrapped an arm around Ianto’s shoulders and pulled him against his chest. “I hope you’re right,” he said quietly. “I’m just not so sure. After all, he felt everything the young girl did under that bridge. That’s a lot of emotion to take in.”

Ianto pulled back. “Wait, so he didn’t just see it, he _felt_ it too?” He looked horrified at the thought.

Jack nodded. “Yeah. Hence my worry.”

Ianto’s forehead furrowed in thought. “So, did you actually figure out how it _worked_ then? Because emotions sounds a bit more complex than just visions.”

“We did, actually,” Jack answered, settling more comfortably back against the back of the sofa. “Well, mostly.”

Ianto made himself similarly comfortable, clearly curious to hear the explanation. Which didn’t surprise Jack, really; Ianto liked knowing how things worked. He seemed to like knowing things full stop, come to think of it. It was a trait that already appeared to be serving him well in the task he’d appointed himself as archivist.

“It’s some sort of transducer,” he started, “which means it…”

“Transforms one sort of energy into another, yes, I know,” Ianto interrupted, shooting Jack a briefly scathing look. “So what energy is this one transforming into what?”

Jack grinned wryly, feeling suitably chastised for doubting Ianto’s knowledge. “It’s amplifying and converting the latent quantum energy left behind by strong emotions into… well, we’ve been calling them ghosts. But that’s not really that accurate. We just don’t have anything better to call them.”

Ianto was nodding slowly. “Quantum energy from emotions…” he repeated, sounding like he was trying to decide if he believed it or not.

“Human emotions – and those of pretty much every properly sentient life form in the universe, actually – are energy,” Jack expounded, trying to remember everything he’d learned about this phenomenon back at school – ever so long ago, now. “Strong emotions produce so much energy, in fact, that some of it gets left behind, lingering in that point in space. It’s what causes that feeling you get like someone’s watching you in an empty room.”

“And this tech is taking that leftover energy and using it to recreate the original event for whoever is holding it?” Ianto clarified warily.

Jack nodded; Ianto shuddered uncomfortably. “I’m glad it wasn’t me out there with you today,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of that at all.” He shifted a little closer to Jack and looked around them. “And who knows what’s lurking in _this_ place.”

That thought caused _Jack_ to shiver. He knew all too well some of the horrors that had taken place inside the walls of the Hub in the last century or so. He’d witnessed more than he’d ever have wanted to, and he’d only been there on and off for the first several decades. Many more he’d heard second or third hand.

Ianto had a point; he definitely had to make sure that the device was never activated inside the Hub. None of his team deserved the horror of seeing any of that.

“I know there must be some terrible energy left behind just from things I’ve seen here in the last eight months,” Ianto said quietly. “Add that up over more than a hundred years…”

Jack sighed softly at the unknowing echoing of his own thoughts, the words bringing to mind all too easily some of the incidents Ianto was referring to; Ianto’s near death after the breach of the Rift. Lisa’s final day, final minutes.

The lingering energy in Lisa’s room didn’t need a ghost machine to make itself known, it was evident just from stepping in. Jack had avoided the room diligently almost from the moment Lisa had gone, and he knew Ianto hadn’t been back either, the practicalities afterwards having been left to Owen, Tosh and Suzie.

Maybe one day, but not quite yet.

They sat in silence for a while, huddled together as they contemplated the possible ramifications of the machine.

“There are a lot of good things in here too, though, you know?” Jack eventually ventured, trying to push the sorrow and grief his memories had brought to the surface back down.

Ianto smiled and nodded, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. His mind was clearly still awash with sadder thoughts, and Jack couldn’t bear to see it. “Did I ever tell you the story of the New Year’s party they decided to throw in 1967?”

And there it was, a spark of interest and amusement in Ianto’s eyes. “No,” he said curiously.

“Well,” Jack started, trying to bring to mind as many details as he could. “It was the late 60s, so you can probably imagine some of it. All of the resident refugees were invited – there weren’t as many as there are now but there were a few – and a few selected agents from other branches...”

As Jack told the tale, he found other funny stories from the Hub’s past coming to mind, so he told those too… and if there was a bit of embellishment here and there, well, Ianto would never know.

It wasn’t until he finished what he was _sure_ was a hilarious tale and Ianto didn’t laugh that he noticed that the exertions of the day had finally won out and Ianto had fallen asleep where he sat, head tucked against Jack’s shoulder, one foot tucked underneath him.

Jack knew he should wake him, send him home, but he didn’t quite have the heart even to move him. Instead, he settled against the back of the sofa and just pulled Ianto closer.


	13. Chapter 13

Ianto drifted into wakefulness at the same moment as he realised his neck was _killing_ him. He reached out an arm blindly to grope for his alarm clock and encountered, instead of the bedside cabinet and lamp he’d expected, a solid wall.

He cracked open one eye and realised that the reason for this, and also for the ache that was making itself known right down his back now, was that he wasn’t in his own bed.

It was a few more moments before he realised that where he _was_ was the sofa in the Hub, and several seconds on top of that before a slight movement under him brought it to his attention that he wasn’t alone.

Quite how he’d come to be waking up sprawled on top of Jack on the sofa – fully clothed, no less – took another minute to filter its way through his only semi-awake brain. He remembered sitting here with Jack last night while he told stories of past escapades in the Hub, and then… he must have fallen asleep on him.

He carefully levered himself upright, trying not to disturb Jack, who appeared to be still asleep. He didn’t know if it was that he’d been unsuccessful or if Jack hadn’t really been asleep to start with, but just moments after he twisted to perch on the edge of the sofa instead of Jack, Jack sat up to join him, shaking out shoulders that were clearly little better than Ianto’s.

Ianto rolled his stiff shoulders and lifted his wrist so he could peer blearily at his watch. A little after 7.30, which meant they had a while before any of the others were likely to show up. Time enough to clean up and change into the spare set of clothing he hoped he still had downstairs.

He rolled his head, his neck twinging painfully as he did so. “The next…” he started huskily, breaking off to clear his throat. “The next time we sleep together,” he said, turning his head towards Jack as much as he could without tweaking a sore muscle in his neck. “It is going to be in a proper bed. My neck is going to kill me all day.”

A warm hand landed on the back of his neck a moment later, gently rubbing at the tense muscles. “Next time?” Jack’s voice sounded hopeful.

Ianto groaned deep in his throat as Jack’s fingers manipulated the sore spots of his neck and shoulders. “Mmmm…yeah. Next time.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop back as the tendons loosened. “Perhaps with… oh yes, just there… with a few less clothes too. Next time.”

He knew in the back of his mind that he was being rather forward, but he didn’t see any point in being coy – and Jack didn’t exactly seem to mind.

He was limp and relaxed by the time Jack’s hand disappeared from his neck, replaced for a fraction of a second with his lips before Jack blew out an obvious breath and shifted away from him on the sofa.

“Okay, we both need to go and get cleaned up and changed before the others start to arrive,” he said firmly, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself as much as he was Ianto.

Ianto glanced at his watch again, realising with dismay that Jack was right. “All right,” he breathed. “But first.” He twisted and caught Jack around the back of his neck, winding his fingertips into the ends of his hair. He pulled Jack towards him, joining their lips in a brief but warm kiss, morning breath be damned.

“Good morning,” he said quietly as he drew back. “I just had to do that. And now I’ll go.” He could feel Jack’s eyes on his back – or more likely, he decided, his arse – as he headed down to collect clean clothes and wash up in the communal bathrooms.

 

There was no one in sight when he re-emerged a while later; evidently none of the rest of the team had arrived yet, and he assumed Jack himself was either still getting ready or had disappeared out for a walk. He wasn’t particularly worried either way.

Dropping his suit jacket over a railing, Ianto headed up to the kitchen area. Slightly annoyingly, just as Jack had predicted the night before, the final panel of the coffee machine slid back into place easily now that he’d had a night’s sleep – even if it _had_ been on a sofa – and was no longer frustrated with it.

Despite his confidence in his own skills, it was with more than a little trepidation that he loaded the beans and flicked the ‘on’ switch. It clicked into its cycle a nervous second later, a little louder than it had been before but still working. Relieved, he set about preparing the rest of the machine so there would be fresh coffee by the time Jack appeared again.

In a flash of perfect timing, the coffee finished, Jack appeared from the hatch under his office and Tosh walked in the door all at the same moment.

A wide smile spread across Jack’s face as he crossed the Hub towards Ianto. “Is that coffee I sense brewing?”

“It is indeed,” he smiled back, noticing that Tosh had dropped her bag and was following Jack up to the kitchen area looking _almost_ as pleased as him.

“I _told_ you you’d get it back on just fine this morning, didn’t I?” Jack said smugly as he came within reach.

Ianto nodded and pulled the milk out of the fridge. “You did,” he admitted, “but if you’re going to gloat about it, then Tosh is getting the first cup.” He doctored it to her liking and reached past Jack to hand it to her.

“Thanks, Ianto,” Tosh replied, humming happily as she took a sip.

“If I say I’m sorry for gloating will you give me a coffee?” Jack said as Ianto prepared another mug.

Ianto looked up and barely withheld a chuckle at the overly-exaggerated contrite look on Jack’s face. “I’ll think about it,” he told him while making sure the second mug was just to Jack’s liking.

“I’m very sorry,” Jack repeated, pouting a little, playful affection warring with a tinge of actual contrition in his eyes. The expression was rather irresistible, and despite the knowledge that Tosh was still right there next to them, Ianto leant forward and pressed a chaste kiss to the protruding lip.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed as he pulled back and handed over the mug. “But only because my shoulders would be agony right now if not for your magic fingers.”

Jack closed his eyes blissfully as he took a long sip from the mug, and there was a squeak from Tosh.

Ianto strongly suspected he knew the cause, but turned away from the preparation of his own cup of coffee to look questioningly at her. “Everything okay, Tosh?” he asked mildly.

Tosh’s gaze switched rapidly between them, a hopeful smile waiting to break free on her lips. “You two,” she started. “Are you actually…?” She raised her eyebrows indicatively.

Ianto shared a momentary glance with Jack and knew they were more or less on the same page about this. Tosh had, after all, been rather instrumental in this finally _happening_.

Jack sidled closer to him, his free hand coming to rest on the small of Ianto’s back. “Are we actually what?” he asked with a tone of faux-innocence that was utterly ridiculous on him.

Tosh shook her head at them. “You know. You’re…” One hand flailed as she searched for an appropriate word.

“We haven’t actually given it a name, really,” Ianto jumped in, taking pity on her. “But yes, we’re… something. Together.”

A truly happy grin spread across Tosh’s face. “I knew it!” she said triumphantly. “You’ve been getting on far too well for you not to have sorted this out.”

Ianto suspected the tips of his ears might be pinkening slightly as she beamed at them. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “Can you sort of… keep this to yourself for now, though?”

“We will tell Gwen and Owen, just not quite yet,” Jack added when Tosh looked uncertain.

“Of course,” she said softly. “But…”

“We just want to keep it quiet while it’s still so new,” Ianto explained. “And, well, we want to keep it out of work anyway. It’ll start getting too messy if we let the two overlap too much.”

Ianto shot a sidelong glance at Jack as he spoke. They hadn’t _technically_ discussed any of this, but given the pattern they’d already fallen into since that first proper kiss, Ianto thought that Jack would agree. He was relieved to see Jack’s small nod.

“Okay,” Tosh said. “Just…”

She was interrupted when the sirens went off over the cog door, heralding Gwen’s arrival.

Jack swiftly took a small step away from Ianto, spinning on his heel and nodding back at him as if he had just finished a perfectly innocuous conversation. The affectionate crinkle of his eyes wouldn’t be visible from the angle of the entrance.

“Later,” he said, taking what remained of his mug of coffee down to his office. Tosh smiled at him once more and followed Jack down to her desk.

Ianto finished preparing his own cup of coffee and waited. Sure enough, just as he’d expected, Gwen appeared at his side within minutes.

“Ooh, is the coffee machine fixed?” she asked excitedly.

Ianto raised an eyebrow at her; he thought it was fairly obvious that it was. Setting his own cup down on the counter, he poured a cup for Gwen – just in case she needed further convincing.

“You’re a star, Ianto Jones,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the mug.

“Gwen! Ianto!” Jack called up to them. “We can’t waste time waiting for Owen! Meeting, my office, two minutes! We need to find this kid!”

 

With none of the locations they’d tried the day before having proved useful, they’d set about digging a little deeper, and attempting to find any other known associates that they could try in their search.

They’d been sifting through what scant information they had for over an hour before Ianto noticed quite how quickly time was passing – and how late it was with, as of yet, no sign of Owen.

“I know that this is Owen we’re talking about,” he ventured. “But it’s half past ten. He’s usually here by now, especially if there’s something going on.”

Jack frowned, taking a look at his watch as if he suspected Ianto of misleading him about exactly how late it was. “I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid,” he said quietly, almost under his breath. “I’ll just…”

Jack was interrupted when his phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and looked at the screen before answering; whoever it was, the name that had come up clearly surprised him a little.

“Owen,” he said overly brightly, answering _that_ question. “So nice of you to let us know you’re still alive.”

He paused, and Ianto could hear the faint noises from the other end of the line that told him Owen was saying something. Something that made Jack sit up straighter. “You’ve what? All right, just stay there. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t let _him_ go anywhere either. We’ll be there shortly.”

He hung up. “Owen’s got the kid,” he announced authoritatively, standing up. “Let’s go see what he knows.” He grabbed the transducer device from his desk and tossed it to Gwen. “We’ll take this with us; jog his memory.”

Ianto hesitated for just a moment before following the lead of Tosh and Gwen and standing up to follow him. He wasn’t entirely sure if Jack had intended to include him in the statement or not, but he was going with them whether he had or not. It was high time he got over this fear of leaving the Hub on a case-related expedition, he told himself. He’d never let fear rule him before, and he’d been letting it do so for too long now.

And it wasn’t as if they were headed out to meet some ferocious creature. This was a nineteen year old kid. Nothing to worry about.

He grabbed his jacket from the railings where he’d left it – it wasn’t quite cold enough that day to need his coat as well – and started to follow the others down to the garage.

Jack let Gwen and Tosh outstrip him, pausing and turning back to face Ianto.

“I’m coming with you,” Ianto said before Jack had a chance to say anything against the idea. “I need to get over this ridiculous phobia about going into the field before it gets any more out of control.” He gave Jack a steady look, despite the butterflies that had appeared in his belly as the reality set in.

Jack reached out as if to grab him before catching himself and clenching his fists at his sides. “Okay,” he said tensely. “But...” Ianto could see Jack’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “Just be careful, all right? I… Don’t get hurt.” If anything, he looked more nervous about Ianto leaving the Hub with them than Ianto himself felt.

 

They pulled up outside a rather disreputable pub quarter of an hour later, the Sunday morning traffic proving heavier than expected. They found Owen sitting at a table on the far side of the bar with a scruffy looking youth, two glasses on the table in front of them. They appeared to be mid-conversation.

“Well, this looks nice and cosy,” Jack announced as they approached. “I hope you’re holding out for flowers,” he told the young man, who just looked confused as the four of them pulled chairs around the table.

“Okay, what’s going on?” he asked, clearly nervous at having the attention of all five of them focussed on him. “If this is about them dodgy fags I swear I dunno what happened to them. I just…”

The torrent of words came to an abrupt halt when Gwen handed Jack the device and he, in turn, set it on the table in front of them. Ianto thought he looked even more scared than he had a few seconds previously.

“I… uhh…”

“You might like to know that we’re probably the only ones you can actually tell about this,” Jack said, more gently than Ianto would have expected. Clearly he had noticed the barely concealed terror on Bernie’s face too.

“Where did you get it?” Ianto prompted when Bernie looked blank and stayed silent.

“Me and a mate was using this lockup down on Moira Street to… well, we was using it, anyway. Used to belong to this old guy, bit soft in the head. He had all sorts of rubbish in there. We chucked most of it, but there’s some left.” He gestured jerkily towards the device. “Found that in this biscuit tin with old coins and weird rocks and stuff. I took it cos I thought it might be worth something, you know? Like on one of them TV shows they have on in the mornings, _Cash in the Attic_ and that.”

Ianto exchanged a slightly incredulous look with Tosh as Owen poorly stifled a laugh. Just the _idea_ …

“Hey, you never know,” Bernie protested. “So I took it home with me, and then that thing turns on and starts lighting up and stuff.” He leant forward across the table. “It makes you see stuff. People. _Real_ people. Real things, too. I was down the bay one night and it lit up and I seen this woman with a bundle all wrapped up. It was dark and she was creeping around, putting it in the water all secret, like.”

Ianto had a horrible feeling he knew where this story was going.

Bernie shook his head and sat up a bit. “I was weird, cos it was like I was her. I knew that she was scared, that she knew what she was doing was wrong. I didn’t even have to see to know it was her baby what was all wrapped up. Dead. No one even knew about it. She just put it in the water and ran away.”

Ianto suppressed a shudder at the thought of someone doing that, and from the corner of his eye he could see Gwen doing the same.

“Then I realised, I knew her,” Bernie continued. “She’s old now, but she lives up by the church. So I goes up to see her and I told her what I seen, and she gave me money not to tell anyone.”

“You _blackmailed_ her?” Owen asked.

Bernie shook his head vigorously. “No, no I didn’t. She offered. Seriously, I’ve seen things you wouldn’t even _believe_. There’s that old bridge on Penfro Street. I saw a man, following this girl home from a dance…”

Owen interrupted him. “Yeah, I know. I saw it.” He shook his head. “Jack, I don’t think he knows anything else.”

Jack nodded and scooped up the device from the table, slipping it into his pocket. “Yeah, I agree. Let’s go.”

They all started to get up.

“Been nice meeting you, Bernie,” Jack said mildly. Ianto turned to leave, Gwen just in front of him.

“Hey! Oi!” Bernie called from behind them. “You can’t just take that, that’s mine!” Ianto and Gwen both ignored it, carrying on walking. Ianto could feel Tosh just behind him, doing the same.

“So you don’t want the other half, then?” Bernie cried out. _That_ stopped them. Ianto turned around to look back at him.

“The other half?” Jack asked demandingly.

Bernie nodded. “Yeah, it’s back at my place.”

Ianto could see Jack’s shoulders heave. “All right, guys,” he declared. “Looks like we’re escorting young Bernie here home.”

 

Bernie’s house, when they reached it, was ramshackle and dirty but liveable…just about. Ianto wasn’t _actually_ a clean freak, despite what the others occasionally said, but he had to fight the urge to start tidying the place up.

Even in the disarray, Bernie found them the tin almost the moment they came through the front door.

Jack pried the lid off and pulled out another section of the device that looked almost identical to the first. “The other half,” he said decidedly. He pulled the first half from his pocket and handed both parts to Tosh.

Gwen took the rest of the tin and rifled through it. “Weird rocks,” she said, holding one up. “Foreign coins…”

Jack glanced over. “Alien rocks. Alien coins. That stuff washes through the Rift all the time. I bet a lot of people have some and don’t even know it’s alien.”

Ianto watched as Tosh fiddled with the two halves of the device, trying to fit them together.

“Bernie, was this in two pieces when you found it?” Jack asked the youth.

Bernie looked like he was about to answer, but was interrupted when Tosh cried out in triumph. “I’ve got it! Just like clicking Lego together.”

Ianto took a step closer to Tosh, curious, but he noticed from the corner of his eye that Bernie had started to look even more nervous than before.

Jack and the others joined Ianto next to Tosh a few moments later, Jack taking the assembled item and looking closely at it for a second or two. Gwen tugged it from his fingers after a minute to have a look herself.

Owen was the first to take a step back, tugging the zip on his jacket a little higher and making for the door. “Come on, you lot,” he said, nodding towards the exit.

Jack nodded. Tosh picked up the tin that Gwen had abandoned on the table. “We’ll just take this with us, too,” she smiled at Bernie before following Owen out of the door.

“So you’re not going to arrest me or anything?” Bernie asked Jack, picking at his fingers.

“We’re not the police,” Jack said simply.

“But I robbed them!” Bernie protested. Ianto wondered for a moment if he actually _wanted_ to be arrested.

“Yes,” Jack agreed. “I know.”

“And now you’re robbing me.”

Jack shrugged. “So call the cops.” With that, he swept out of the door. Ianto hurried to follow him, Gwen behind him.

They were a ways down the street before they realised Gwen wasn’t right behind them, when she yelled out to them. “Jack! Jack!”

They all twisted back to see what the problem was. Gwen had the device in her hands and she appeared to have become transfixed by it.

It took Ianto a few seconds for it to click quite what was going on, by which point Jack was already running towards her, crying out to stop her. Along with Tosh and Owen, he took chase.

By the time they reached her, Gwen was clearly becoming aware of her surroundings again, but she looked terrified.

Jack pulled the machine away from her, shaking his head. “What were you thinking, Gwen?”

Gwen didn’t seem to have heard Jack’s words, as she stared right past him. “Oh God,” she whispered. “He’s going to die.”


	14. Chapter 14

“Do you think Gwen will be okay?” Ianto asked Jack, as he walked up behind him where he was examining the photos and documents that had been stuck up on the transparent board earlier that evening, before Jack had sent everyone home.

Jack turned, shrugging a little and looking worried. “I really don’t know. I hope so, but I couldn’t say. I’m not sure she completely believed my explanation of the possibilities surrounding future events.”

Ianto nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not going to be easy for her to get out of her head though. And you know she’s probably going to try to do something to stop it.”

“I know,” Jack replied. “Hopefully it won’t land her in trouble.”

Ianto could tell that Jack was very worried that it would; he could sympathise, he was worried himself. Sometimes Gwen let her heart rule her head, and when she thought she could help, would dive into a situation blindly without thinking it through. So far, in the month and a half she’d been at Torchwood, she’d been lucky; it hadn’t caused her any _serious_ trouble. Ianto had a horrible feeling that might not continue indefinitely.

“I’m sure she…” he started, intending to reassure Jack, but was cut off when Jack’s phone rang. Jack frowned as he glanced at the display.

“Tosh? Is something wrong?”

Ianto watched as the furrows in Jack’s forehead deepened the longer he listened to whatever Tosh was telling him; evidently, it wasn’t good news.

“Okay,” he eventually said, sighing. “I’ll see you both in a few minutes then. We might have to go check up on this, just in case.”

He shook his head as he hung up. Ianto raised an eyebrow queryingly.

“Owen paid a visit to Ed Morgan this morning,” Jack said, tapping a few keys on his phone, presumably finding a number.

“And?” As worrying as that prospect was, Ianto wasn’t sure it warranted immediate investigation, so was sure there was more to the story.

“So, apparently, did Bernie Harris. Who furthermore tried his blackmailing trick on him.”

“Ah.” Given what both Gwen and Bernie had seen with the device, that _could_ be a concern.

Jack tapped his foot as he waited for the other end of the phone line to be picked up.

“Gwen,” he said after a few seconds. “We may have a problem with Ed Morgan. Owen went freelance earlier and paid him a visit. Wanted to frighten him. Sounds like he succeeded. I think our friend Bernie Harris got there first. Tried to blackmail him.”

The cog door rolled open as Jack talked to Gwen, Tosh and Owen appearing through it.

Ianto didn’t even have time to greet them before Jack was bustling past. “Owen, with me!” he called back, twisting to walk backwards towards the door. “Tosh, Ianto, do what you can to find out something about this Ed Morgan. And keep an eye on the CCTV, in case Bernie does a runner.”

A moment later, he and Owen had disappeared across the Hub to the garage. Ianto drew across the chair he usually used in situations like this and sat down next to Tosh.

“I actually found Ed Morgan last night,” Tosh said as Ianto set up the CCTV monitors. “Well, his medical records anyway.”

Ianto nodded. He would never bet against Tosh in a search like that. “Anything interesting?”

Tosh brought up a new window on the closest monitor to her, fingers flying across the keyboard as she entered logins and security codes. Moments later, a page of text appeared, a washed out looking photo at the side. Ianto leant forward to read it.

“Paranoid delusions, severe depression, agoraphobia, violent fantasies,” he read off. “That’s a cheery combination.”

Tosh bobbed her head in agreement. “Apparently he hasn’t left his house in years.”

Ianto glanced around the monitors tuned to the CCTV network and something caught his eye on the corner of one screen. He looked back at Tosh’s screen for a moment to check; yes, that was him. “Until now, it seems,” he said, pointing out the staggering figure.

Tosh’s eyes widened and she tugged her desk comms. out from underneath a few papers. “Jack,” she said urgently, tapping them on. “Jack, we’re looking at the CCTV here and… it’s Ed Morgan.”

 _“What? Where?”_

“Just turning the corner into Evelyn Street,” Ianto said, squinting slightly at the identifying text at the bottom of the CCTV image.

 _“That’s Bernie’s street!”_ The foreboding in Jack’s voice was evident even over the comms. _“Keep an eye on him, let me know if anything changes.”_ The other end of the comms. went silent.

Ianto and Tosh had to switch to a different CCTV camera at the other end of the street to keep the man in frame as he made his way down the street. It wasn’t a brilliant picture – the camera was focussed more on the traffic lights at the nearby junction than on the quiet street behind – but it was clear enough that they could follow his progress.

He’d made it quite some way down the street when a figure appeared from one of the houses, stopping in the middle of the road, mere meters away from Ed Morgan.

“Damn, that’s Bernie Harris,” Ianto breathed as he recognised him.

He was joined a moment later by another person, coming out of the same house.

“And Gwen,” Tosh added, sounding concerned.

Ianto knew that, like him, she must be thinking about what Gwen had told them of her vision earlier that day.

Gwen and Bernie moved towards Ed Morgan, Gwen looking like she was trying to talk him out of something.

“Does… does he have a knife in his hand?” Ianto asked, squinting at the fuzzy image on the screen.

Tosh shook her head uncertainly, leaning forward. “I can’t tell. Maybe. There’s definitely something in his hand that’s worrying Gwen and Bernie.”

They moved closer again to Ed, and in the back of the picture, two shapes appeared that were instantly recognisable as Jack and Owen.

Ed lunged towards Gwen and Bernie – it was clear now from his movements that he did in fact have a knife, and he was aiming to use it on young Bernie.

Almost in a flash, Jack and Owen sprang forward and had Ed Morgan restrained between them. Bernie was sprawled across the ground where Gwen had shoved him out of the way.

Ianto breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like everything was going to work out okay after all. No one would die tonight.

Owen left Jack holding Ed, ducking to the ground to pick up something… Ianto assumed it was Ed’s knife.

His calm was swept away when, instead of packing it away safely, Owen stepped back to Ed Morgan’s side, the hand he’d used to pick up the knife hovering close to the older man’s face.

“What’s he _doing_?” Ianto said in puzzlement.

“He saw that attack, just like Bernie Harris did,” Tosh reminded him quietly. “He remembers feeling terrorised by Ed Morgan. It might not be rational, but I’d bet he’s looking for payback.”

“Just put down the knife,” Ianto chanted under his breath, _willing_ the words to somehow reach Owen’s consciousness.

From the looks of it, Jack and Gwen were shouting something similar in person. Ianto could only hope Owen listened.

There was a long tense moment as Gwen inched towards Owen and Ed, her hands out non-threateningly in front of her. Ianto knew this could all go very wrong – it was the sort of thing you read in the papers every week. He could feel Toshiko on edge beside him, knew she recognised where this could end up too.

Even when Owen handed over the knife, he couldn’t quite bring himself to relax. The scene playing out before them was taking twists they could never have expected, and he wasn’t going to accept that it was truly over until everything was safely stored away and everyone had gone their separate ways.

Just for a second, it looked like it was over, and then Ed Morgan moved, running into Gwen and the knife without even a moment’s warning.

Ianto found himself frozen, watching the CCTV image in shock as Owen dropped to his knees, trying to save a man that only minutes before he had looked determined to harm.

Tosh was the one to make the move, typing in a few short commands to switch the CCTV images off. “Sorry,” she said softly. “I just couldn’t watch anymore.”

Ianto shook his head. “I don’t blame you.” He sighed. “Gwen is going to blame herself.”

He could see Tosh’s nod from the corner of his eye.

Jack’s voice burst through the comms. into the silence that had fallen over them. _“We’ll be back in ten minutes,”_ he said, sounding weary. _“I’ll see you then.”_

The words spurred Ianto and Tosh into action. They spent the next ten minutes doing their best to prepare the Hub for the return of the others. All the photos and reports regarding the case were swept into a file folder; Ianto would get Jack to sort through it with him another time, after Gwen had gone.

Ianto also dug a thick fleecy blanket from a cupboard, and set some water to boil for hot sweet tea. From the little he’d seen just on CCTV, Gwen would probably be nearing a state of shock. He pulled out a few glass tumblers and a decanter too; if ever there was a night they would be needed, this was it.

Jack and Owen were supporting a shaky Gwen between them when they appeared from the garage a little over ten minutes later. Making one last check on the slowly steeping tea, Ianto grabbed the blanket and went to meet them.

Gwen barely seemed to notice as he, with a little help from Owen, wrapped it around her shoulders. Her gaze was fixed on the wall behind him.

“Hot tea in your office?” he asked Jack as they started to move again. Jack nodded silently.

By the time Ianto joined them in Jack’s office with the mug of sweet tea for Gwen, the others had discovered the glasses and decanter.

“Trouble is, you can’t just sit and look at it. You have to try to change it, make it different,” Jack was saying, head shaking, as Ianto handed the mug to Gwen, making sure her fingers were wrapped around it securely.

There was one filled glass left on the desk; Ianto picked it up, taking a sip.

“It’s not meant for us,” Jack continued, picking up the device. “Too many ghosts. We’d be lost.”

There was a moment of silence, all of them sipping from the drinks in their hands.

“Ianto,” Jack said, holding the device out to him without even looking.

Ianto drained the last few sips from his glass before taking it. “Secure archives?” he asked, more a formality than anything else. He knew that they all knew that was where this thing belonged.

Jack nodded.

It was the work of only a few minutes to sort out a holding box for the item before it would be entered into the secure archive, but it was long enough for the others to finish their drinks and – with a weary goodnight – drift out towards the cog door.

He was just closing the safe when Jack followed them, tugging a worn-out looking Gwen along behind him. Ianto hoped he could find a way to ease Gwen’s mind even a little before sending her home. He hoped even more that Gwen would find some way to talk to her boyfriend about it without giving away pertinent details. She needed that.

He’d almost finished drying Gwen’s now clean mug and their glasses by the time Jack reappeared, looking a little drained himself.

“She going to be okay?” Ianto asked as Jack came to join him in the kitchen.

Jack shrugged one shoulder. “I think so. Once she sorts it out in her head. A night’s sleep should help. Or, well, a morning’s sleep, now.”

Ianto glanced down at his watch and was shocked to see how late it was – or, as Jack had pointed out, how early.

“Yes, that really is the time,” Jack said just behind his ear, evidently having caught the glance. “You should go home too. Get some sleep.”

An unexpected yawn cut off the words Ianto had been about to say in response.

“Exactly,” Jack chuckled, spinning Ianto on the spot with a hand on his hip. “Go, sleep, and I’ll see you… later.”

The more they talked about it, the more tired Ianto found himself feeling, so he simply nodded and reached for his jacket.

“Oh, and Ianto?” Jack added before he could move away. Ianto paused and looked back, waiting for Jack to finish the sentence. “Tomorrow-tonight - Rift allowing, of course – I’m taking you to dinner.”

Ianto blinked at him, too tired to feel more than a faint burst of gleeful anticipation at Jack’s pronouncement. “Okay.”

“There are too many traumatised ghosts in this town,” Jack continued. “Let’s go out and make some happy ones.”


	15. Chapter 15

It was approaching lunchtime when Ianto tripped into the Hub, still slightly tired after the long day before. Jack was nowhere to be seen which, while far from unusual, was a little frustrating.

Ianto vaguely recalled being invited out to dinner – a proper _date_ , a voice in his head said a little incredulously – shortly before he’d left to go home. If it had been real, he was absolutely certain in the agreement he’d given, but the trouble was, those last few minutes before leaving were somewhat fuzzy in his memory.

He wasn’t entirely sure the invitation wasn’t something he’d just dreamed up. And Jack didn’t seem to be here to ask.

While he waited, he fell back on the familiar, preparing the coffee machine so he could start it going as soon as anyone else appeared, and digging in the back of a cupboard to see if they still had some biscuits left.

He nearly cracked his head on the top of the cupboard when the alarms alerted him to the opening of the cog door; with an alacrity which felt vaguely embarrassing when he thought about it a moment later, he straightened and rounded the corner from the kitchen area so he could see the door. The rush felt yet more foolish when the figure that stepped through was Tosh, and not Jack.

“Morning, Tosh,” he called anyway. “Or, afternoon, just,” he added after a glance at his watch. “I was just about to start the coffee.”

‘Coffee’, it appeared, was the magic word, as Jack appeared moments later from… somewhere. It looked like he’d been almost _underneath_ a section of the Rift manipulator, which seemed unlikely. Although not impossible.

He grinned at Ianto. “I hadn’t realised you’d come in,” he said, wiping his hands on his rather grubby looking T-shirt. “Or I’d have come to find you already.”

“Well, I’ve only been here ten minutes,” Ianto shrugged, making light of his own disappointment at the lack of Jack when he’d come in. “And Tosh literally just arrived.”

“Nevertheless,” Jack replied, rubbing at a smudge on his cheek.

Ianto nodded and stepped back into the kitchen, flicking the switch to start the coffee machine’s process. “Should be ready in a few more minutes,” he informed Tosh and Jack as they approached. “In the meantime.” He looked pointedly at the smears of grime across Jack’s clothing that became more obvious as he neared. “ _What_ have you been doing?”

Jack looked down at himself as if just noticing the state of his clothes. “Oh, well, I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I’d make a start on some of the more fiddly annual maintenance jobs that were needing done.”

Ianto leant forwards on his toes slowly. “Underneath the Rift manipulator,” he said, looking for confirmation.

“Yes, underneath the manipulator,” Jack responded, using a corner of his T-shirt to rub at a smudge just above his wrist. Ianto repressed the urge to hand him a cloth instead; the T-shirt would probably have to be tossed out anyway. There was no way some of those stains would come out properly.

“Anyway,” Jack continued, stopping closer. “Good morning.” He came closer still and Ianto could easily intuit his intentions.

“Afternoon, actually,” he said, taking a step back. “And you’re not coming anywhere near my clean suit until you’ve cleaned up.”

Jack frowned petulantly but dutifully backed away. Ianto looked back at the coffee machine; it still had at least another minute or two left to run before he’d be ready to dispense coffees. “Look, why don’t you go do that now.” He turned to Tosh. “And I’ll bring coffee down to both of your desks when it’s ready.”

Tosh grinned and bounded forward to hug him lightly – shooting a teasing smirk at Jack as she pulled back. “That would be great, Ianto, thanks.”

With that, they left him alone to finish sorting out the coffee. Looking again at his watch, he decided to skip looking for the biscuits – it would be time for lunch before they knew it anyway.

Neither Gwen nor Owen had appeared by the time he had finished pouring coffee into three mugs for himself, Tosh and Jack. A quick lean over a railing told him that Jack hadn’t quite managed to clean up and get back to his desk yet, but he put his mug on a tray with the other two anyway.

He could always chat to Tosh while he waited for Jack to reappear, after all.

Tosh smiled up at him as he rested on the edge of her desk, putting her coffee down beside him and glancing at the screen. It was covered in numbers and symbols, none of which meant all that much to him.

“Getting anywhere?” he asked mildly.

Tosh shrugged one shoulder and took a sip of her coffee. “It’s an update on my predictor program. I think it might almost be giving believable predictions, finally. Hopefully if what I’m doing now works, it will be a bit more reliable.”

Ianto nodded along, understanding her aim if not the details shown on her monitor. A thought struck him.

“So,” he said, forcing his tone to remain casual. “Ignoring the update for the moment… what is it predicting for this evening?”

Tosh smirked at him instead of answering. “Got special plans for this evening, then?” she asked mischievously.

“Yes, he does,” Jack answered, appearing at Ianto’s shoulder. “Unless he’s changed his mind.”

A brief look at Jack’s face told Ianto that, despite the flippant tone, Jack was actually genuinely unsure that Ianto wouldn’t have backed down on his agreement from the night before.

“If you’re still asking,” he assured him, twisting to face him a little more fully. “Then I’m still saying yes.”

The tension drained from Jack’s face, leaving only a smile which twinkled in his eyes. “Oh, I’m still asking,” he responded, a wicked gleam emerging in his eyes. “I’m definitely still asking.”

Ianto couldn’t help but smile back. “Good.” Suddenly remembering the third mug from the tray, he reached behind him and grasped it, holding it out to Jack without breaking gaze once.

“So,” Tosh said pointedly. Ianto blinked; he’d almost forgotten she was still there. “What are these mystery plans you have then?” She grinned. “Or is it some big secret and you can’t tell me?”

“No big secret,” Jack told her, pausing to take a long sip from his mug. “Just dinner. In an actual restaurant rather than takeaway in the Hub, for a change.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Rift permitting, of course.”

Tosh was beaming. “An actual date, you mean? You two?”

Ianto nodded, watching covertly to check that Jack was also making affirmative motions. “Yes.”

“So is this making it official?” Tosh continued. “Are you going public, or…?” She didn’t complete the sentence, but Ianto knew exactly what she meant. Unfortunately he wasn’t entirely sure of the answer.

“Erm…” he hesitated, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand. “I don’t know if we’re really at the stage to…”

“It’s whatever Ianto wants it to be,” Jack said over the top of him, cutting him off.

Ianto stared at him in surprise. “But… don’t…?”

Jack blew out a breath. “Honestly, if it was just me… I’d be up on a rooftop shouting it to the world.”

Ianto half-chuckled. “You do like a good rooftop,” he murmured.

“But I’m happy with whatever you’re comfortable with,” Jack continued, giving no indication if he’d actually heard Ianto or not. “If you want to keep it quiet, just between the two – well, three of us, then that’s fine with me.”

Ianto wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t really know what he _felt_. There was a part of him that just wanted it out there, that wanted to tell the masses. But there was also a part, no less vocal than the other, that was terrified of the idea of opening up their fledgling relationship to outside scrutiny.

He knew he wanted to be with Jack, he just wasn’t sure he was ready to hear some people’s opinions on that fact.

“I don’t know,” he eventually said quietly. “I think… Maybe not quite yet. I still need to… sort some things in my head.”

Jack smiled and nodded. “Okay.” He turned back to Tosh. “So… any predictions for whether the Rift will actually let us go on our date this evening?”

“Just give me a minute,” Tosh told him, turning back to her computer and bringing up a new window on a different monitor. Ianto stood up off the desk and turned around so he could watch what she was doing better.

The faintly wiggly lines she brought up a few moments later were vaguely familiar – they’d used somewhat similar data traces back when he and Tosh had been correlating Weevil incidents and patterns in Rift activity, a couple of months ago now – but didn’t really tell him much.

“Well, bearing in mind that this is still very much in the testing phase,” Tosh started after perusing the screen for a few moments, “I can tell you that the prediction is saying it should stay quite quiet.”

Ianto’s mind immediately started reminding him of all the weird things they’d faced recently that weren’t directly connected to the Rift at all. Its very presence seemed to attract alien attention to Cardiff – and very rarely those of species _not_ bent on destruction.

“And if something else comes up,” Tosh went on before he even had a chance to voice his concerns, “then Gwen, Owen and I will handle it.” She shrugged. “Well, unless something unexpectedly huge comes up.”

“How will you…?” Ianto started, only to have Tosh anticipate his question once more and interrupt with the answer.

“I’ll think of something. How I explain to Owen and Gwen that we’re not calling either of you in is for me to worry about, not you.”

“But…”

“No,” Tosh said firmly. “The only thing either of you will be worrying about is having a good time together, okay?”

Ianto resisted the urge to take a step backwards. Tosh could be quite fierce when she put her mind to it.

“Okay,” he capitulated, knowing even as he said it that it was at least partially a lie; he was fairly sure the thought would be there in the very back of his mind all evening no matter how much he ignored it.

 

He spent the rest of the afternoon in the archives, getting back on track with their organisation, trying not to worry about the possibility of the Rift spitting out something horrible between that moment and eight o’clock. Or of something particularly nasty showing up later that evening and cutting short the date he hadn’t known until that morning he wanted so much.

If it occurred to him that he was fretting about what the Rift might do to distract himself from agonising over the fact that was actually going on a _date_ with _Jack_ , he quickly dismissed the thought. The only thing that could possibly go wrong that evening was an alien attack, and that was how it was going to stay.

So lost was he in his musings and in the methodical sorting of file folders that it wasn’t until his phone buzzed in his pocket that he realised how much time had passed.

“What’s wrong?” he said, answering it. Wondering what had happened that Jack was phoning him from just upstairs.

 _“Nothing,”_ Jack replied, sounding a little bemused. _“What makes you think something’s wrong?”_

“Well, you phoning me, for one.”

 _“I’m only phoning because someone forgot to take his comms. down to the archives with him,”_ Jack said. Ianto could almost see the smirk on Jack’s face as he spoke. He swept a glance over his worktable and realised that Jack was right: he hadn’t brought his earpiece with him.

“So if nothing’s wrong, what _do_ you want me for?” he asked.

 _“There are so many ways I could answer that,”_ Jack responded instantly, a hint of a tease in his tone. _“But I’m actually calling because it’s nearly five o’clock and everything’s still quiet.”_

Ianto cocked his head to the side. This was undoubtedly a good thing, but he still wasn’t sure why it warranted a phone call. “So?”

 _“So I’m sending you home to… do whatever it is that Ianto Jones does before a date.”_

“Won’t that…?” Ianto started, only to be interrupted mid-question for the countless time that day; perhaps his lingering fatigue from the late night was making him too predictable.

 _“I’m sending everyone home, not just you. Tosh has rerouted the Rift alarm to her mobile, just in case.”_

“Right,” Ianto breathed, clamping down firmly on the butterflies that had appeared in his belly. “I’ll just finish up here then and go home to… get ready.”

 _“Just see that you do,”_ Jack said, his tone light but his words clearly only partially in jest. _“I’ll be picking you up at half past seven, and I don’t want to find you still here.”_

“I promise, just a couple more folders to finish this drawer and I’ll go. Now leave me alone to finish this and go get ready yourself.”

Resolutely, he hung up and set about sorting the last few folders from this particular drawer – there really were, just as he’d told Jack, only a couple left.

He glanced at his watch as he shrugged his suit jacket back on on the way out of the archives. Five o’clock. Just two and a half hours to go.

 

Ianto paced his living room, trying desperately to calm his nerves. Logically, he knew there was no reason to suspect anything would go wrong. Yes, it had been over half a decade since he’d last been on a first date, but this wasn’t really a first date in the traditional sense of the word. He and Jack had already kissed – had already done a lot more than that, even. They already knew so much about each other.

None of it stopped his stomach from trying to climb its way into his throat as he waited. Another look at his watch told him it was still only 7.24. Barely a minute since the last time he’d checked.

He rather wished now that something _had_ come up that afternoon – nothing big enough to actually derail their plans for tonight, of course. Just… something that would have taken up some time, something that would have made him later home. Something that would have left him less time to work himself into a nervous frenzy.

At 7.28 (and 36 seconds, not that Ianto had been checking obsessively or anything) his doorbell finally rang. Ianto closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to compose himself enough to at least project a calm _exterior_.

Jack was shifting his weight from foot to foot when Ianto opened the door, a slightly tremulous smile on his face that said so much more than any of his usual grins. The clear display that Jack was just as apprehensive about tonight as he was soothed something inside him, and his heart hammered slightly more gently in his chest.

“Shall we go, then?” he asked after a few moments wherein Jack seemed to have fallen into a reverie staring at him.

Jack blinked and shook himself out of it. “Yes, yes,” he replied. “Let’s go.”

The drive to the restaurant was thankfully short and uncomfortably quiet. Ianto wanted to ask where they were going, but couldn’t push the words out through the oppressive silence.

Jack jumped out almost the moment he pulled into a space at the side of the road in front of a small, slightly faded, Italian restaurant. Ianto shook his shoulders and followed him, determined to shake off the awkwardness. There was no reason for it – he and Jack knew each other better than that – and he wasn’t going to let it carry on.

Actually following through on his resolve was harder than it seemed, however.

Jack, evidently, had made reservations, and they’d been shown immediately to a quiet table near the back of the restaurant. Ianto fiddled with the edges of his menu as he tried to think of _something_ to say to break the tension.

He stole a glance at Jack over the top edge of the menu; he wasn’t looking at the menu at all, but instead seemed to be staring at a patch of floor just to the right of their table.

“This is ridiculous,” he blurted.

Jack frowned at him. “What is?”

Ianto dropped the menu to the table and waved between them. “This. Us. We’re acting like we’re suddenly strangers just because we’re on a date. We never usually have trouble finding something to talk about.” Just saying the words out loud felt freeing, a tight lump in his chest dissolving.

Jack chuckled wryly. “It’s been a long time since I was actually on a date. I think I’ve forgotten how to do it.”

Ianto didn’t want to think too hard about the last time he himself had been on a date; it had been longer ago than he’d like. He and Lisa had always meant to do them more often, but Torchwood had happened, and they’d put them off again and again. There’d be plenty of time later, they’d told themselves – how very wrong they’d been.

He looked across at the man on the other side of the table; he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Jack had forever, but _he_ didn’t, and he wasn’t going to waste what time he had left.

“I haven’t exactly been on the circuit myself for quite a while,” he eventually said. “If you get something wrong, I probably won’t even know it.”

“Depends how wrong I manage to get it,” Jack responded, but the light was back in his eyes, telling Ianto that he was just teasing now.

“Hmm…” Ianto tilted his head to the side and pretended to give the comment serious consideration. “You know, you may have a point there.” He smiled. “I’ve seen your interpersonal skills. You could make a real mess of this.”

Jack let his menu fall and pressed a hand to his throat, mouth open in mock affront. “Says the man tossing out insults on a first date.” The wide-eyed outrage fell away, leaving behind only a mischievous gleam. “And I’ll have you know that my _interpersonal_ skills have never been found at fault.”

Ianto resisted rolling his eyes at the obvious response. Although he had to admit – to himself if not aloud – that going on his own experiences so far, Jack probably wasn’t lying. “If you say so,” he said, instead, picking up his menu again and turning his attention to the choices.

“Oh I most definitely say so.”

 

Ianto wondered, as Jack got out of the other side of the SUV back at his flat, if Jack knew already that Ianto had no intentions of letting him walk away that night with just a kiss at the door, or if he’d actually have to say something.

He’d already had to battle to get Jack to let him pay his share at the restaurant – it had taken a reminder that _Jack_ was the one who’d pointed out not so long ago that Ianto wasn’t broke anymore before he’d relented. And even then it had clearly been reluctantly – it had made Ianto wonder for a moment just _how_ long it had been since Jack had done the ‘dating’ thing.

Jack paused a couple of feet away as Ianto dug his keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door to his building. When he didn’t immediately follow Ianto through it, Ianto turned and leaned against the door, with what he hoped was an inviting look on his face.

It took a moment, but the smile that cracked across Jack’s face told Ianto that if he hadn’t known before, he definitely knew now, and Jack crowded behind him as they climbed the stairs to Ianto’s flat.

“You claimed your ‘interpersonal’ skills were faultless,” Ianto murmured as he pushed Jack back against the just-closed door. “I think I’m going to need a demonstration to prove it.”

Jack strained forward against Ianto’s grip, tugging on his bottom lip with his teeth until Ianto fell into the kiss. Ianto let his eyes close as the liplock turned heated, higher brain functions beginning to shut down as they melted together.

“How’s that for proof?” Jack said throatily as they broke for air, his eyes dark with desire.

“I don’t know…” Ianto breathed. “It’s a good start, but I think I’m going to need a little more.”

Almost before his next breath, Ianto found himself hustled backwards across the room, Jack growling in his ear between kisses. “Oh I can definitely do more.”

Fingers itching for skin, Ianto pushed at Jack’s shoulders, dislodging the coat but not by far; he batted at Jack’s hands until he lowered them enough to let the coat fall to the floor at their feet, pushing his braces out of the way while he was at it.

Distracted by working the buttons of Jack’s dark silky shirt, he barely noticed his own shirt being unbuttoned until smooth fingertips stroked down his chest, leaving trails of heat behind them.

His hands stalled on the button they’d been fighting as he swayed a little with the sensations. He drifted a little hazily until Jack caught his side, eliciting an unexpected snort of laughter as he brushed over a ticklish spot.

Their eyes met as Ianto recovered, and Ianto was caught by the sheer intensity in Jack’s gaze. “Bed,” he choked out, breaking away to walk backwards towards the bedroom door, shedding his own shirt as he went.

Following his example, Jack had finished unbuttoning his shirt and had pulled his T-shirt off too by the time he reached Ianto just inside the bedroom.

Not trusting his trembling hands with any further attempts to undress Jack, Ianto started in on his own trousers, toeing off his shoes as he did so.

He shuffled carefully backwards, eyes locked on Jack, trying not to trip over anything (including his own feet) as Jack unselfconsciously shed all of his remaining clothes. Ianto gorged on the view, heat pooling in his belly as he perched on the edge and tossed away the last of his underwear.

If the speed at which Jack made it across the room after that was anything to go on, Jack was as turned on by the view as Ianto was.

He didn’t have long to savour it, but the feel of Jack’s skin all along his own as they crashed back together onto the bed more than made up for it. Hands trailed across any patch of skin they could reach, and the kisses grew wilder and sloppier as the passion rose.

The increasingly frantic grind proving not enough, Ianto wriggled until he could flip them over, pinning Jack back into the mattress. Jack put up a token struggle, but Ianto could tell he wasn’t really protesting the change.

Pulling back a little, he indulged a fantasy he’d had for longer than he’d like to admit even to himself, tasting his way down Jack’s neck and to his chest, alternating nibbling kisses with soothing licks. The salty taste of sweat and Jack tingled on his tongue, and Jack’s soft whimpers of pleasure rushed in his ears.

He slid lower on the bed, only one target in his mind, but was halted when Jack gripped his shoulder before he could reach his destination.

“Are you sure you want to?” Jack rasped.

Ianto raised his head and stared at him incredulously. “Do I _look_ unsure?”

Jack frowned as if the question was taxing him – if his brain was as hazy as Ianto’s, then he figured that it could be. “Well, no,” he conceded. “But I don’t want you to have regrets. The first time you…”

“Jack,” Ianto interrupted, grinning. “I thought I told you the other day but maybe not. There are a few things – well, a lot of things, really – that I haven’t done with another man, but this? This is not one of them, so shut up and enjoy it.”

Much to Ianto’s pleased amazement, he did.


	16. Chapter 16

Ianto reached out to smack the bleeping alarm clock without opening his eyes. Pressing his face into the pillow, he stretched out across the bed, trying to convince himself to obey the alarm and actually get up.

It was a second before he remembered the reason for the warm relaxation deep in his bones, and why something about this didn’t quite jive with his ability to drape himself right over the entirety of the bed. After indulging in mutual pleasures, he and Jack had fallen asleep late the previous evening tangled up together in the middle of the bed. He swept his hand across the sheet. There was no warm spot; Jack had clearly been gone for a while.

Suppressing a yawn along with his vague disappointment, Ianto forced his eyes open and sat up, extending a hand to switch the alarm clock from merely ‘snooze’ to ‘off’. “Well, he barely sleeps in the first place,” he muttered to himself, trying to rationalise away his upset. “Why _would_ he stay when he’d just be stuck lying awake all night.”

Wiping the sleep from the corner of his eye, he rolled out of bed and padded out through the living room and into the kitchen. On autopilot, he filled up the water for the cafetière and measured out ground coffee, flipping a switch to set the water heating while he washed and dressed.

Still not fully awake, he nearly walked straight through to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day, until a movement in the corner of his eye attracted his attention.

Much to his surprise, on his sofa, half-dressed and paying no attention to his surroundings, was Jack. Engrossed in what looked like one of the heftier biographies that Ianto had had sitting on his bookshelves for several years but had never quite made it through.

Ianto came to a halt and watched for a few moments as Jack flipped a page, still oblivious to Ianto’s presence. “Good morning, Jack,” he eventually said when it didn’t appear that Jack was going to look up any time soon.

Jack started almost imperceptibly, closing the book in his lap and looking up. He looked Ianto up and down obviously, his smile growing as he did so. “Oh, I’d definitely say it was a good morning.”

Ianto realised, belatedly, that he hadn’t grabbed any clothes before coming out to start the coffee; he didn’t usually sleep naked. His first instinct said to cover up, but he fought against it with what rationality he could muster this early in the morning. It wasn’t like Jack hadn’t seen it all and more the night before, and Ianto had never been one to be ashamed of his body.

He looked Jack up and down obviously, shaking his head. “Not as good as it could have been.” He glanced briefly at the wall clock. “And, sadly, we don’t have time to make it better. I need to get ready, and we both need to get to work.”

Leaning down to put the book on the floor, Jack rolled to his feet, stalking towards Ianto until he was mere inches away. Ianto knew he should really be heading to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day, but he couldn’t bring himself to move away. Not with Jack looking at him like that.

“You do know you don’t _have_ to be in as early as you usually are,” Jack said, crowding closer. “No one else will be.”

Ianto’s heart rate quickened as Jack’s hands slid down his sides to rest on his hips. “But…”

“But nothing,” Jack interrupted. “There’s no emergency, no rush. The Hub will survive a little longer without us.”

The stroke of Jack’s fingers on his skin was making it hard for Ianto to hold onto his train of thought – and his resistance. “I still have to…” he managed to push out before Jack cut him off again, this time with a kiss whose gentleness did nothing to allay the underlying passion.

“If you’re really that determined to get ready for work,” Jack panted when they eventually broke for air. “Go jump in the shower.” He grinned wickedly, eyes dark. “I’ll even scrub your back for you.”

Arousal having taken over his brain too much even to attempt to sustain his protest, Ianto gave in. Grabbing one of Jack’s wandering hands, he dragged him to the bathroom and all thoughts of the Hub were washed right out of his mind until some time later.

 

Ianto knew, as he arrived at the Hub, that it set a possibly dangerous precedent that Jack had been correct in his predictions, and none of the others had yet arrived. Admittedly, even with the fifteen minutes he’d waited behind to give Jack a head start – arriving together couldn’t look anything other than suspicious, he’d insisted – it was still barely nine, but that didn’t _necessarily_ preclude the rest of the team being there. Tosh in particular could often arrive within half an hour of Ianto himself if there was a project she was eager to continue with.

This morning, however, even Jack was nowhere to be seen. Ianto wondered for a moment where he’d managed to get to before brushing the thought off; Jack was more than capable of looking after himself.

Taking advantage, instead, of the quiet, Ianto dug out his cleaning supplies. Distracted by his organisational project in the archives, he knew he hadn’t been keeping on top of this part of his job as well as he should for quite a while now – and it was beginning to show. With a little luck, he could get the job finished before the rest of the team showed up to start work for the day; like small children, they seemed to have the uncanny ability to add to the mess far faster than he could clean it up.

 

He almost succeeded in completing the task undisturbed; he was just starting on the final task on his list – giving the office area a quick once over with a brush – when a pair of hands settled on his hips. “That’s not going to help me get this finished any faster, Jack,” he rebuked.

“Who said I was trying to help?” Jack said, pulling Ianto a little closer.

Conscious that the door could open at any moment, Ianto pulled away, spinning to face Jack. “Not during work hours, Jack,” he said determinedly. “We can’t let…” He waved his hand between them, not entirely sure yet what to call this growing relationship they had embarked on. “ _This_ get in the way of being professional at work.”

It eased a small worried knot in his chest to get the words out – even if he knew that no matter how convicted he was, Jack would persuade him into something sooner or later.

“So, what are you counting as work hours, then?” Jack asked, a note of teasing in his voice but his face serious. “I live here, remember, so just being here means nothing.”

Ianto frowned, stumped for a moment. Jack had a point. Torchwood didn’t exactly follow a nice neat Monday to Friday, nine to five schedule – here even less than it had in London. Jack living in the Hub only served to further blur the lines between work and casual.

“Whenever I _say_ it’s work hours,” he eventually declared, smirking a little. There – that left him plenty of wiggle room to claim plausible deniability when Jack eventually broke him down.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t opened the Tourist Office in quite some time, and we _do_ have appearances to maintain.”

Swiftly, so as not to give Jack time to respond, he leant his brush against the wall and swept down the steps and out of the cog door, leaving Jack spluttering slightly behind him.

 

The Tourist Information Office was a little dusty, but bore no other obvious signs of Ianto’s recent neglect. A few short minutes of dusting and straightening leaflets and Ianto was satisfied.

Tosh was just rounding the bottom of the stairs down from Stryd Stuart as he unlocked the door and flipped the sign to say ‘Open’, so he held it open and waited for her.

“Morning, Ianto,” she smiled as she stepped past him. “Good night?”

Ianto felt a quiet smile emerging, and had a horrible feeling that a blush was attempting to make its way up his neck. “Yeah,” he nodded. “It was… nice.”

Tosh raised her eyebrows, letting the door swing closed behind her. “Just ‘nice’?”

“Okay, _very_ nice,” Ianto amended, consciously not rolling his eyes. “We had a nice meal at that little Italian in town, and then, well, I don’t kiss and tell.” He winked. “So you’ll have to figure the rest out on your own.”

Tosh grinned. “I’m glad you had a good time. And don’t worry, I won’t say anything to Gwen or Owen until you’re ready.”

Ianto nodded his thanks. “Thank you. How were things with the Rift last night? I didn’t see anything obvious when I got in this morning, but Jack got here first, so…”

“Pretty quiet,” Tosh replied. “A couple of weevils surfaced in Adamstown late in the evening, but Owen and I chased them back into the sewers pretty quickly.”

Ianto frowned slightly. “And he wasn’t curious why it was you two and not Jack doing that?”

“Well, he was, a little,” Tosh shrugged. “But I think he believed my excuses.”

Ianto wasn’t entirely convinced, but nodded anyway, hitting the button to lock the outside door and open the hidden one to the Hub.

“Anyway,” Tosh continued, “I want to go see if the Rift patterns last night when the weevils were spotted match up with my prediction algorithms, so I’ll leave you to it.”

 

If Owen did have any suspicions about the night before, they weren’t apparent when he strolled in the door twenty minutes later, Gwen hot on his heels. Ianto found himself vacillating again over whether to just tell them now – he didn’t want to lie to them, didn’t want to force Tosh to lie to them, but at the same time, what he and Jack had was still so new and fragile; was it strong enough to cope with the scrutiny?

Pushing the dilemma to the back of his mind, he did one last check on the leaflet displays and fired up the deceptively-high spec computer on the desk. There weren’t usually all that many customers through the door, and there were hundreds of newly databased artefacts to be cross-referenced.

 

By mid-afternoon, despite the leisurely lunch break insisted upon by his somewhat bored colleagues and a handful of tourists, he was well down his list.

The door creaked open and he hit the ‘boss key’, the artefact database window being instantly hidden by a ‘Visit Cardiff’ splashscreen. He looked up, polite, professional smile already fixed in place, ready to deal with whatever tourism enquiry the customer had – even if that just meant directing them to the bigger (and real) tourist office in town.

The new arrival didn’t, however, seem to be in need of directions to the castle or the public toilets, coming straight to the desk and slapping his hands down, looking fearful.

It took Ianto a few seconds to place him; it had been a long time.

He stood up, hand already going for the button to open the Hub entrance.

”Oelmue?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”


	17. Chapter 17

“Right, start at the beginning,” Jack said firmly. “And don’t leave anything out.”

Although not unheard of, one of their more independent Rift-ugees coming to them for help beyond the initial settling in period was rare – Ianto’s appearance at the cog door a few minutes before with Oelmue in tow had been surprising, to say the least. For the most part, the Rift-ugee population of Cardiff looked after their own, without overt intervention from Torchwood beyond occasional check-ins.

Oelmue’s fingers tightened around the cup of coffee in front of him on the conference room table, his eyes closing almost reverently as he took a sip.

“It start last week,” he began a little hesitantly. “In Wednesday.” Jack suddenly realised the nagging feeling that something was different that had been attacking him since Oelmue’s arrival; he was no longer carrying the small translation device he’d had on him when he crash landed on Earth all those months ago. His only-slightly broken English was a testament to his efforts at fitting into his new home, despite the circumstances under which it had become so.

He nodded encouragingly. “Yes?”

“We have meeting to talk of what to do. Bekar badly hurt by someone in Monday night, nearly die. So we have meeting to talk, so we find out who hurt Bekar, and we punish them.”

Jack knew better by now than to ask why they hadn’t involved the police – if there had been any suspicion that the crime had not been entirely contained within their own community, he knew they would have at least considered it, but for the most part they avoided the police – and many other official organisations - if they could. In their somewhat tenuous position, he couldn’t say he blamed them.

Besides, from what he’d observed over the years, they did a fairly good job of policing themselves. Unfortunately, Jack had a feeling he knew where this particular story was going, but he let Oelmue continue.

“We talk, but no one know what happen, no one see it, so for few days some gone to place where it happen, to look, and they ask Bekar questions but they find nothing, and Bekar see nothing.”

“There was no evidence at all?” Gwen interjected from the other side of the table.

Oelmue shook his head. “No. They find no evidence.”

“So what happened after that?” Jack prompted, more and more sure that his theory was correct.

“For few days not much happen,” Oelmue replied. “People ask questions, have talks, but still no one know. Everyone is…” He shook his hands in front of him, clearly not quite sure of the word he wanted. Jack nodded, the gesture clear enough to indicate the emotion involved.

“They want punish person who hurt Bekar,” Oelmue continued. “They angry they don’t know who is he.”

“What did they do to you?” Ianto asked quietly from his spot next to Oelmue, the worry in his eyes saying he’d come to the same conclusions as Jack.

“Last night…” Oelmue stopped and took a long breath, his hands beginning to tremble noticeably on the table. “Last night they come to my house, they make me go with them to meeting place and they say I do it, I hurt Bekar.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I never hurt him, it isn’t me, but they don’t believe me when I say that.”

Jack wasn’t entirely sure what it was about Oelmue’s words or expression, but unlike, it seemed, the rest of his community, he believed him. He just couldn’t picture him deliberately harming anyone, although Jack knew his instincts had failed him sometimes in the past. “Can you prove that you didn’t do it?” he asked gently, hoping Oelmue didn’t take the question the wrong way.

“No,” Oelmue said despondently. “When they say it happen, I am at home myself. I have no…” He trailed off.

“Alibi,” Owen finished for him. Oelmue nodded.

“Yes, alibi. I have no alibi. But I don’t hurt Bekar. They don’t prove I hurt him, they only say.”

“But the others believe them, and not you?” Jack guessed.

“Yes, they believe them. I can say nothing to change this. The man who say it first is important man, others think much of him. He say I hurt Bekar, so they say I do it.”

“What will happen to you if you can’t prove it wasn’t you?” Gwen asked, sounding worried.

Oelmue shrugged. “I not know. Maybe lock up, maybe hurt like Bekar hurt. They have many ways of punish. I get away this morning; they are angry for that when they find out too. Is bad.”

Jack sighed inwardly. He knew there was crime within the Rift-ugee community, and he’d never been so naïve as to believe that that didn’t include corruption, but he’d hoped it would never reach this level. Regardless of whether Oelmue was being entirely truthful or not, the situation warranted attention; they were going to have to step in and do some investigating.

“Right,” he said, looking around at his team. “It looks like we have some people we need to talk to.”

 

Given that he was supposedly a fairly prominent member of the community, Jack was amazed at how difficult this being, Peloski, was to actually pin down. Everyone they spoke to had an idea of where he could be found, but when they went to the directed places, all they found was someone else who was convinced he would be found somewhere else.

“Anyone else getting a sense of déjà vu here?” he sighed as they collapsed as one around a rickety picnic table.

“He has to be somewhere,” Gwen replied tiredly. “Surely someone in the community would know if he’d skipped town, right?”

Jack shrugged one shoulder. “Well, if all Oelmue says is true, then maybe no one in the community really knows him properly after all. There could be a lot he’s hiding.” It wouldn’t be the first time a Rift-ugee had harboured a dangerous secret – just like humans, most of them had many sides, and not all of them pleasant.

“What’s our next step, then?” Owen asked pointedly. “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere just asking around.”

Jack looked around. The area was a little run down, but there were a few CCTV cameras scattered around. He knew for a fact that a few of them weren’t on the city network. “Well, first,” he started, “I have a project for Tosh. We need to hack into a few cameras, and hopefully we’ll pick up on something. Meanwhile… I’m sorry, but door to door is really all we have right now. There’s always a chance someone will know something.”

Jack couldn’t really blame his team for their disheartened sighs as they shuffled out of their seats.

 

Countless mostly-fruitless conversations and a little over 24 hours later, they finally had the stroke of luck they’d been waiting for. Surprisingly, Peloski had put up no resistance when asked to come to the Hub to talk, and for the first time since hearing Oelmue’s story the day before, Jack was having doubts about what had really gone on.

Just to be safe, he made sure Ianto had taken Oelmue out of sight of the main entrance to the Hub before they returned with Peloski. No matter what the truth of the situation was, clearly something wasn’t right between them.

“So you’re absolutely certain of what happened that night?”

Peloski hesitated for a fraction of a second before nodding. “Yes.”

“Do you have any evidence? Did you find a witness?” Jack pressed – he wasn’t about to turn Oelmue over to them without hard proof he’d actually been involved in any wrongdoing.

“No,” Peloski admitted. “But I know that he did it.” There was an odd look on his face for just a moment before his features smoothed back into a look of calm co-operation.

“You’re sure?” Jack wasn’t convinced.

“Absolutely”

Jack steepled his fingers, staring at the table through the gaps while he thought. “Peloski,” he started after some contemplation, part of his brain already wondering if what they needed would be easy to find. “Would you mind if we carried out a lie detector test? Not that I don’t believe you, but we do want to be completely certain.”

Peloski nodded immediately, looking less perturbed by the idea than Jack would have expected if he’d been lying. “No problem.”

 

Jack mentally crossed his fingers as he set up the device on the interrogation room table. They’d had it for years, and it _had_ been tested thoroughly when they had first found it, but they’d never had cause before to use it ‘in anger’. Like so much of what they collected from around Cardiff, it had languished in the archives, just waiting to be put to use – it was just lucky that Ianto had been through that section already and had known just where he’d stored it while waiting on the place being clear enough that he could properly start assigning shelving.

Pulling out the attached cables, he indicated for Peloski to roll up his sleeve and wired him up. He flicked a switch and a small, bright, green light came on at the front of the device.

“This is the best lie detector we’ve ever picked up,” he explained as he took his seat on the other side of the table. “If you tell a lie, the light will turn red. Is everything clear so far?”

Peloski nodded.

“All right.” Jack took a breath and cast his mind back through all the times in the (mostly distant) past where he had witnessed or carried out a lie detector style test. “We’ll start off with a few obvious ones, just so we can be sure the machine is doing what it’s supposed to. Is your name Peloski?”

“No,” Peloski answered immediately. “But that _is_ the name I have chosen to be known by in the time I have been on this planet; most species here seemed to find my real name too difficult to pronounce.”

Jack nodded. Rift-ugees frequently ended up changing their names either to make it more universally pronounceable or just to feel like they fit in better in their new surroundings.

The light remained green.

Jack glanced down at the notes he’d taken from the sparse file on Peloski that had been in the arrivals records.

“This time I’d like you to deliberately lie in your answer,” he said. “How long have you been living on Earth?”

Peloski hesitated for a moment before declaring, “Just over seventeen years.”

The light turned red, correctly indicating that the statement was false – in truth, it was nearly seven years less than that.

“Okay then.” Jack settled his shoulders. “Everything appears to be in working order, so let’s get started. You’ve accused Oelmue of carrying out the recent assault on Bekar, is that correct?”

Peloski nodded. “That’s right.”

“Do you have any proof of his guilt?”

“No.” Peloski paused. “I just somehow _know_ what happened.”

“And what happened is that Oelmue attacked Bekar?” Jack continued leadingly.

”Yes.”

The light turned red. Peloski frowned and looked confused. “How can it read as a lie? I _know_ that’s what happened.”

“Evidently,” Jack replied, “you don’t.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You do know who really did it though, don’t you?” He dropped his voice to little above a whisper, knowing most beings found that more intimidating than shouting. “Who are you lying for? Who are you _protecting_?”

“Nobody,” Peloski gulped emphatically. “I swear, no one.”

The light flickered rapidly between green and red for half a second and then blinked out completely.

Jack and Peloski both stared at it in shock. That definitely wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

Reaching around, Jack switched the machine off and on again – no matter where in the universe you were, or how much time passed, turning it off and on remained the best way to reset a broken system. The green light reappeared, causing Jack to sigh a little in relief.

“So let’s try that one again. Who are you protecting?” He fixed Peloski with a hard look.

Peloski kept one eye on the green light as he tentatively repeated his answer. “No one.”

The light oscillated between colours for barely a fraction of a second before going dark once again, this time with a worrying pop. Jack switched it off, wary of trying to turn it on again in light of the noise. He’d have to have Tosh take a look at it once this case was over.

It wasn’t a complicated question, so the only reason Jack could think of that could be giving the machine problems was that the _answer_ was complicated.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re not protecting anyone?” he said, leaning towards Peloski.

Peloski’s brow furrowed. “I _thought_ I was, but… I don’t know what I know anymore.” He looked at the machine. “I would have sworn under pain of death that Oelmue did it, I was so _sure_ , but now…” He shook his head in defeat.

“Why were you sure?” Jack asked, moving the lie detector to the side of the table so he could see Peloski more clearly.

Peloski shrugged. “I don’t know. I just _was_. The knowledge was just there when I woke up a few days ago.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that – not at all. He’d seen similar cases before – rarely, but often enough not to discount it as being prohibitively unlikely. Facts – usually false – and emotions would just spring as if from nowhere in a being’s mind – pushed there by a subjugated personality that almost never had the best interests of the dominant personality _or_ their shared body at heart.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have the same technology here that he’d had back when he was a time agent, so there was no way for him to find out for sure if his suspicions were correct. Although… A device they’d researched when they were looking for a cure for Lisa suddenly sprang to mind. It hadn’t, in the end, been any use in what they’d needed from it then, but it might just be exactly what he was looking for now.

“Stay here,” he told Peloski. “And don’t try anything funny, the surveillance system _will_ pick it up.”

Closing the door behind him, he ran up to the office area. “Tosh,” he said hurriedly. “Do you remember what happened to that probe device we found when we were looking for Lisa’s cure? Did Ianto put it back into the archives?”

Tosh nodded. “Everything we looked into that was of no use was taken back and added to his new system.”

“Brilliant.”

A call on the comms. on the way down meant that Ianto had the exact piece of tech he had in mind ready and waiting for him by the time he reached the entrance to the archives.

“We still don’t know what happened that night,” he told Ianto and Oelmue as he took the device and made sure the cables were all secure. “But we might be getting closer. And the good news is that it looks like you might be off the hook, Oelmue. Even if we can’t find out the truth, we have Peloski on tape saying that you didn’t do it.”

Oelmue slumped against the wall, eyes closing in relief. “Thank you. I glad to know I can be safe again from people think I do it.”

Jack nodded. “I’m glad to know my instincts were right and it wasn’t you, but hopefully we can find out who _did_ do it. Which is where this comes in.” He cocked his head, indicating the bundle in his arms, and grinned. “Actually, you’re probably safe to come up now and watch, if you want.”

Oelmue and Ianto exchanged a look and both nodded. Pleased, Jack spun on one foot and made his way back to the main Hub, Oelmue and Ianto hot on his heels.

 

“So you think I’ve got some sort of multiple personality disorder?” Peloski clarified as Jack connected the last few leads to Tosh’s computer.

“It’s a possibility,” Jack replied. “It would certainly explain a few things – like the trouble the lie detector had with you.”

“Is this thing safe?” The various additional monitors Owen was setting up and connecting evidently had Peloski nervous.

Jack hesitated. They really had no way of knowing how safe the device was or wasn’t. All of the testing had been theoretical or simulated; they’d never actually connected it to a living being. “We’ll keep a close eye on you,” he assured him, carefully skirting the truth. “You’ll be fine.”

Peloski didn’t look entirely reassured, but nonetheless nodded his consent for them to continue.

“Everyone ready?” Jack asked, looking around at his team. Tosh sat at her desk, ready to control the probing device. Owen concentrated similarly on the readouts of the medical monitors. Gwen and Ianto hovered watchfully nearby, Oelmue doing the same from a slightly more distant viewpoint.

He looked one last time at Peloski, who took a deep breath and sat back into the chair he was lightly strapped to. “Ready.”

“Tosh.”

A focussed look on her face, Tosh typed a few commands into her workstation.

Peloski shuddered, a pained grimace passing fleetingly across his face, but no change of personality was evident.

“Okay?” Jack waited for Peloski to meet his gaze.

“A little thirsty, but yes,” he said, breathing hard. From the corner of his eye, Jack could see Ianto springing into action, most likely to find a glass of water for him.

A glance at Owen to check that nothing worrying was showing up on the medical scans later, Jack instructed Tosh to up the intensity on the probe, go a little deeper.

Peloski’s eyes screwed up for a moment as the new wave from the probe hit, clearly in some pain, but just as clearly still himself.

By the time his face started to smooth out, Ianto was there with a mug of water and a straw; Peloski emptied it gratefully.

Two more increases later, the change was clear in Peloski’s whole countenance. His face turned hard and angry, and every muscle tensed. This was no longer the same being that had come to them that morning.

Despite the restraints, Jack found himself taking an almost involuntary step back. “I’d say it’s nice to meet you,” he told Peloski’s alternate personality. “But I think we both know it would be a lie. I don’t much like what you’ve been up to.”

“Let me out,” the being in the chair growled.

“Why did you hurt Bekar?” Jack asked, ignoring the demand and making an educated guess at what had really happened that night.

“Let me go, or I will find a way to hurt you.”

“Did he do something to upset you? Or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Jack continued.

All of the muscles in Peloski’s body tensed as his usually hidden personality struggled against the restraints. “He shouldn’t have been there,” he ground out, face hard. “He shouldn’t have disturbed me.”

Jack frowned. “Disturbed you doing what?”

He didn’t get an answer.

Barely a fraction of a second after Owen started calling frantically for Tosh to turn down the intensity of the probe, there was a sickening splattering sound and Jack felt something hit his chest.

He looked back at Peloski, but he was unrecognisable.

Whatever it was that had happened between him and Bekar, Jack could at least say with some surety that it wouldn’t be happening again.

This just wasn’t really how he wanted to ensure that.


	18. Chapter 18

It had been a long day, a very long day. The explanation of what they’d learned the previous evening – and the sacrifice that had been made for that knowledge – had been repeated more times, and to more people, than Jack dared to count.

And they were still no closer to finding out what – if anything - Peloski’s alternate personality had been doing when he’d been so upset to be interrupted.

“I hate days like today,” he sighed as he dropped down onto the sofa where Ianto was already slumped. “Giving good people bad news never gets any easier.”

“Look on the bright side,” Ianto replied, leaning into his shoulder. “At least _you_ weren’t trying to extract brain matter from computer equipment.”

Jack wrapped a hand around Ianto’s thigh and tugged him closer. “I’m sorry. But it did need to be done.”

“No need to apologise, it _is_ technically part of my job,” Ianto shrugged against him. “Just… don’t explode any more heads in the future, please?”

“It’s not on my to-do list,” Jack assured him.

“On that note, Owen finished the autopsy. Hopefully the reason for the whole head-exploding thing will be in the report he left on your desk before he went home.”

Jack looked over at the stack of paperwork on his desk and back at Ianto. “It can wait until tomorrow,” he said with conviction. “After today, we definitely deserve the rest of the evening off.” He stood up and offered his hand to Ianto. “The others have already gone. I reckon I put the systems onto remote alarm and take you to dinner.”

Ianto allowed himself to be tugged to his feet, a slight frown furrowing his brow. “While I’m definitely in favour of leaving,” he started. “Do you mind if we skip the dinner out and just grab some takeaway and go back to mine?”

Jack pulled him closer and wrapped his free arm around Ianto’s back. “Mind?” An evening together in Ianto’s cosy flat sounded just perfect. “Why on Earth would I mind?”

 

Jack blinked as the music swelled and the end credits rolled on the DVD, realising he had no idea how the plot had been resolved. What was left of the small tub of ice cream on the coffee table had completely melted too while he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Wait, how did the movie end?” he asked Ianto, a little breathless.

Ianto glanced at the screen, where the names of lighting supervisors and wardrobe assistants were scrolling past. “Umm… what were we watching again?”

Jack craned his neck to see if he could spot the DVD case, unwilling to untangle himself from Ianto any further to look more thoroughly. “Not a clue.”

Ianto shrugged, winding his fingers back into Jack’s hair and tugging his head back down. “Oh well. It’s not that important…”

When Ianto’s lips met his once more, Jack decided he agreed. This, this was far more important.

The background noise from the DVD ceased, the screen probably returning to the main menu, but Jack barely even noticed. Picking up where he’d left off before the film ending had startled him away, he unbuttoned another button of Ianto’s shirt, eagerly touching new skin as he revealed it.

Ianto melted into the sofa cushions under the attack of Jack’s questing fingers, happy little noises muffled into Jack’s mouth whenever Jack found a particularly sensitive spot. As the final button popped open, baring the expanse of Ianto’s chest to Jack’s exploration, the temptation overwhelmed him and he broke away from the kiss, trailing soft bites and open-mouthed kisses down Ianto’s neck, nipping at his collarbone.

Ianto’s hands scrabbled at the back of Jack’s shirt, rucking it up under his arms and taking his undershirt with it. “Why are you not naked yet?” he panted petulantly. “Too many clothes.”

Jack pulled away and met Ianto’s heated gaze, lust and affection pooling in his gut. “I have no idea,” he grinned, punctuating the words with a shrug. “I’m all in favour of nakedness happening.”

Ianto nodded once and wriggled out of the enclosure of Jack’s arms, righting himself on the sofa. Jack frowned, his brain taking a minute to catch up. “What…?”

“Bed,” Ianto said decidedly as he scrambled to his feet.

Jack definitely had no objection to that idea, and grabbed for the hand Ianto held out to pull him to his feet.

Their progress through the living room towards the bedroom door was slow; as soon as they were vertical, without the sofa cushions in the way, Jack pushed Ianto’s shirt to the floor, and the urge to nibble at his newly revealed shoulders distracted Jack from making any journey at all.

By the time they reached the threshold of Ianto’s bedroom, Jack found himself totally nude, and wondering vaguely how that had happened when he hadn’t managed to get Ianto out of his boxer shorts yet.

The thought vanished completely from his mind a moment later when Ianto spun him against his bedroom wall, pinning him against it and kissing him fiercely. Their hips ground together with minimal coordination, the tip of Jack’s erection sliding slickly across Ianto’s belly. Jack pushed ineffectually at the waistband of Ianto’s boxers, trying to free the fabric trapped between them. “Off,” he gasped between kisses, growling at the back of his throat at the lack of progress. Thwarted, at least temporarily, he abandoned his efforts and slid his hands underneath the elastic instead, gripping Ianto’s arse for better purchase as they rocked against each other.

“Fuck, bed,” Ianto breathed raggedly, pulling back long minutes later.

His knees shaky, Jack nodded enthusiastically and pushed away from the wall, letting Ianto go so he could stumble across the room. Ianto, much to Jack’s satisfaction, obligingly stripped out of his remaining clothing along the way, flopping naked and inviting across his bed.

Jack wasted no time in following him, crawling up the bed to crash half on top of Ianto, nudging his legs open with one of his own. Taking just a moment to appreciate the view, he dropped his head to Ianto’s chest, catching the nipple peeking out of the curls of chest hair lightly between his teeth and pulling gently.

Ianto whimpered brokenly, his hands restlessly grasping at whatever flesh he could reach, fingertips leaving tingling trails across Jack’s back.

Jack made to drift lower, eager for a taste of Ianto’s cock, but a firm grip on his shoulder halted him in his tracks, pulling him back up and over Ianto.

“Want you,” Ianto murmured against his mouth. “Now.”

“I know,” Jack panted in response, twisting his hips so their cocks slid together, sending sparks through him. “Let me…” He tried to dip his head again.

“No.” Ianto’s tone was surprisingly forceful; determined.

With some effort, Jack pulled away, staring down at Ianto’s face in mild confusion. “What…?”

Ianto freed one of his arms and reached out to the bedside unit, opening a drawer. After a few moments of rummaging he brought out several items. Comprehension dawned as a condom and a pristine bottle of lube hit the mattress. “Want _you_ ,” Ianto ground out.

Just the thought sent a burst of heat to Jack’s groin, but he had to be…

“And if you even try to _ask_ me if I’m sure, I’ll…” Ianto paused, breathing hard. “Well, I’ll think of something, and it won’t be fun.” He tilted his hips, pressing even closer. “Just fuck me, already.”

Jack bit down on the urge to check that Ianto really was 100% certain he wanted to do this – Ianto had an imagination, and Jack wanted this far too much to risk invoking whatever punishment Ianto would dole out for the question.

Instead, with trembling fingers, he picked up the bottle of lube and, dismayed, discovered the plastic seal over the lid was untouched. Rolling half-off Ianto and supporting himself on his elbows, he picked at the edge, fingers shaking too hard to be any use in dislodging the shrink-wrapped plastic. “For someone who says he wants this, you’re not making it easy on me,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at Ianto as the plastic stubbornly resisted his best attempts.

“Oh for God’s sake.” Ianto rolled his eyes and snatched the bottle from Jack’s hands, peeling back the plastic with remarkable deftness. “Please, please, get on with it before I go mad.” He flipped open the top before handing it back.

Once again Jack found himself fighting the impulse to make sure Ianto had no misgivings about this; all of his actions _seemed_ sure, but… was he _too_ eager? Did he just want to get it over with now he’d suggested it? Was he…?”

“Jack.” Ianto’s impatient voice interrupted his mental catalogue of worries. “Please.” Jack had to twist his shoulder to avoid spilling lube all over the place when he found himself tugged bodily back across Ianto’s body, lips fitted hungrily over his own, and all of his concerns flew from his mind.

Drifting kisses back along the line of Ianto’s shoulder, Jack nudged Ianto over onto his front, murmuring nonsense in his ear that even he had forgotten seconds later. Shuffling to his knees between Ianto’s splayed legs, Jack took a second to take in the view.

The fantasies he’d been stifling for months had nothing on this moment.

“God, Ianto,” he breathed, shimmying down to the end of the bed and dropping a biting kiss onto the tempting curve at the top of Ianto’s arse.

Ianto hummed deep in his throat and arched his back, the move drawing all of Jack’s attention to the sensual undulation of his thighs and arse.

With his free hand, he palmed a caress up one thigh, dipping into the crack between Ianto’s cheeks with his thumb. The tip brushed across Ianto’s opening, eliciting a stifled keen from Ianto’s chest.

Jack drank the sound in hungrily, pressing in again, more firmly, eager for Ianto’s reaction; he didn’t disappoint, moaning softly and grasping at the sheets beneath them.

“More, Jack. Please, more.”

Quirking a pleased smile, Jack ducked down and licked a broad stripe across the small hole. Ianto whimpered a little. “How’s that?” Jack asked, knowing he sounded cocky, not caring.

Ianto twisted his shoulders and narrowed his eyes at Jack. “ _That_ would be fantastic, if you didn’t keep _stopping_ ,” he growled.

Jack’s cock jumped at the throaty tone, and he dipped his head again helplessly, tracing the tip of his tongue around the rim, darting in for a taste. His senses were surrounded by Ianto; his smell, his taste, and the low moans that rumbled right through him.

Absorbed in what he was doing – lick, dart, swirl – and the eager flesh beneath him, the light tug on his hair surprised him. It took him a fraction of a second to realise that far from wanting him to stop, Ianto meant it as an encouragement: more, harder, now.

Balancing the bottle of lube on the bed beside Ianto’s thigh, he sucked a finger into the corner of his mouth, wetting it thoroughly.

Ianto put up no resistance when Jack tested the entrance to his body, finger tangling with his own tongue. Jack pressed in lightly, listening for any note of discomfort, feeling for any sign that he should stop, finding only groans of pleasure and relaxed muscles.

As Ianto pushed back, urging him deeper, the few cells in Jack’s brain that were still capable of coherent thought mused on the hushed, breathless conversation they’d had in this very bed a few days before. Ianto had admitted to a certain level of inexperience, but from his reactions thus far, it was clear that this, at least, he had done before.

Pulling back, Jack scrambled for the lube, catching it just before the open bottle tipped over. Upending it, he trickled a small amount down Ianto’s crack, the pale liquid oozing down to cover the finger still teasing at his hole.

Ianto jumped. “Fuck, Jack, that’s _cold_ ,” he complained, the vehemence of the complaint diminished by the fact that he was still squirming into the touch.

“Sorry,” Jack said insincerely, smirking slightly as he trailed his fingers through the slowly warming fluid, spreading it around, coating the digits.

He slid one finger in slowly, watching the length as it was enveloped by Ianto’s body. His cock jumped, the sight and feel of Ianto around his finger fuelling his imagination of the act to follow. Limbs already starting to go liquid, he draped himself again across Ianto’s back, dropping sloppy kisses over his shoulder blades as he gradually worked in another finger.

Ianto was boneless beneath him, little whimpers of pleasure escaping him that went right to Jack’s cock, making it harder and harder to keep things slow and careful. And Jack was determined they should stay that way – no matter how sure Ianto was that he wanted this, Jack didn’t want to hurt him. He was going to be completely ready before Jack went that final step.

Another finger later, and Ianto was grasping at him, demanding more. “Now, Jack, _now_. Want you before I come.”

Jack’s fingers trembled more than he’d expected as he fought with the foil wrapper of the condom, finally unwrapping it and rolling it on. He bit his lip as he settled between Ianto’s thighs to once again halt the ‘are you sure’ trying to escape; Ianto was experienced enough that he’d have stopped him by that point if he wasn’t.

He guided himself in, pausing after every shuffle forwards to reassure himself that Ianto was still okay; if the noises he was making were anything to go by (and Jack was trusting that they were) Ianto was more than just okay, he was enjoying himself a great deal.

At first, Jack did his best to keep the pace of his movements slow, what little of his brain that was still thinking unable to keep from worrying about hurting Ianto. Ianto, however, was having none of it, rocking his hips at an ever increasing rate; Jack instinctively thrust in sync, conscious thought disappearing in the face of incredible pleasure.

He planted sloppy kisses wherever he could reach, muttering breathless endearments into the heated skin as he felt himself approaching the edge. Ianto twisted his head, and Jack craned to meet him, lips brushing together haphazardly as they gasped for air.

Jack wiggled his hand between Ianto and the sheets, urging him to draw his knees up under him. Ianto cried out at the change in angle; Jack’s thrusts became shallower and faster as he chased release. Knowing he wasn’t going to last much longer, Jack wrapped his hand around Ianto’s cock, fingers sliding slickly in the pre-come pearling at the tip.

Just a few frantic strokes later, Ianto shuddered beneath him, a stream of incomprehensible words flooding from him as he spilled over Jack’s fist. Jack jerked his hips forward once, twice more, his release crashing into him powerfully, leaving him wrecked and sated, draped bonelessly over Ianto’s back.

“Jack?” Ianto mumbled a long minute later.

Jack nuzzled into Ianto’s neck in response. “Hmm?”

“You’re many things, a lot of them wonderful, but what you’re not is weightless.”

The unspoken demand couldn’t have been clearer. Dredging up what little energy was left in his limbs, Jack carefully pulled out, rolling to his back beside Ianto.

A handful of tissues appeared in front of him a few moments later. Jack wasn’t entirely sure where Ianto had produced them from, but he didn’t really care enough to ask. Instead, he cleaned up as much as he could, tossing the tissue wrapped condom into the small bin by the wall.

When he turned back to Ianto, he found he’d already done the same, and was watching Jack with one heavy-lidded eye.

Jack wrapped himself around Ianto, pulling him close and nestling into the pillows. “Okay?” he murmured against the side of Ianto’s head, beginning to drift into a satisfied sleep.

“Me? I’m fantastic,” Ianto responded sleepily, snaking an arm around Jack’s chest.

Before Jack could muster any reply, he was asleep.

 

Jack awoke with a mouthful of hair and a numb feeling in one arm. He peered over Ianto’s head at the clock on the bedside table. _06.35_. The Hub had been completely unwatched all night, and he was feeling a little unnerved. Ianto stirred when he tried to free his arm.

“Huh? Jack?” Ianto muttered, still mostly asleep.

“I’m just going to check in at the Hub,” Jack said quietly, kissing Ianto’s temple chastely. “Go back to sleep, and I’ll see you later.”

By the time Jack had gathered all of his clothes from around the flat and was ready to leave, all that was visible of Ianto above the duvet was a tuft of dark hair. Jack allowed himself a fond smile, and left him to sleep.

 

It was approaching mid-morning by the time the cog-door opened to reveal the face Jack had been anticipating seeing all morning. Ianto’s eyes skated quickly over him and he disappeared directly in the direction of the archives without so much as a ‘good morning’. Jack frowned but let it go – the rest of the team were within earshot, after all, and they were still keeping ‘them’ quiet.

When Ianto walked out the door at 4.30 that afternoon and had still yet to say a word to Jack, he started to get worried. Was he regretting things? Jack began to wish that, despite Ianto’s threats the night before, he’d stopped to be _absolutely_ sure. Something had evidently happened in Ianto’s mind between the night before and arriving at the Hub that morning, and it was killing Jack not to know _what_.

He considered, after the others had similarly drifted off to various homes, following Ianto and asking what was going on, but talked himself out of it. If Ianto wanted to talk to him, he’d have done so during the day. Clearly he didn’t want to be bothered, so it would be a far better idea to let him have the time he needed.

When Ianto was ready to talk, Jack would be there to listen.

 

“I don’t mean to pry, but… are you and Ianto okay?” Tosh’s words did nothing to ease the anxious tightness in Jack’s chest. Ianto had been quite obviously avoiding him for three full days now, and every passing hour had further dropped Jack’s hopes of any change.

“Of course, we’re fine,” he bluffed. “Just lots to get done.”

Tosh didn’t look convinced, but didn’t push, leaving her folder of results on his desk and returning to her own to collect her coat and bag. “Good night, then,” she called back before leaving for home.

Jack pushed papers around his desk uselessly for a few minutes before tossing his pen down in frustration. This had gone on long enough. If he’d done something wrong, it was time for Ianto to _tell_ him about it.

He couldn’t stop possibilities from running through his mind the entire way to Ianto’s flat. _Was_ it just that he regretted moving too fast that night? Or was there some more serious problem?

By the time he knocked on the door, Jack was starting to doubt if he _really_ wanted to hear it after all. But he’d gone so far, it was too late to turn back.

He rocked on his heels as he waited for him to answer the door.

When the door did open, a minute later, the face on the other side was a shock. He didn’t recognise her, but she was clearly at ease in Ianto’s flat, with feet bare and hair loose and dishevelled.

His heart sank into his feet and he barely stayed upright. _Well, shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End
> 
> Well, not THE END, the end. There is another part to come. Just as soon as I finish writing it...


End file.
